


Immortal Game

by TunaFax



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Blindshipping, Illustrated, M/M, puzzpleshipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-03-21 17:17:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 79,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3700634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TunaFax/pseuds/TunaFax
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illustrated! </p><p>A cursed pharaoh with a temper is gifted a strange priest by gods as a joke.</p><p>Meanwhile, Yugi is playing against Anubis for both of their lives, but Atem doesn't need to know that. Set in ancient Egypt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. King's Gambit

1.

Atem dreamt of his curse.

And dogs.

So many dogs. He petted one, but he had no treats, and suddenly there were no dogs or curses except the one whose belly he was scratching.

He was at a crossroads. But they weren’t crossroads for him; instead, he was one of someone else's choices.  

Stiffed by his own dream. How wonderful. 

He looked at the person approaching the crossroads and saw himself. And it was  _himself_ alright, except in tight blue clothes at first, then, by magic, in rough clothes of a beggar. No jewels adorned his wrists, his heart pumped dirt through his body, and there was no crown on his head, not even a pearl or a ring or noble thought.

Atem watched the stranger reach the fork in the road and turn his way to pet his dog.

It seemed so trivial to him, as if the enormous decision he had just made was seamless and obvious.

The jackal chewed on Atem's hands but went stiff when the other him touched it. _Ha,_ Atem wanted to tell him, _go get your own dog._

But the beggar-him was obviously only interested in taking his stuff. 

“Hi, Anubis,” he greeted Atem's dog and lit the afterlife with a smile, “I’d like to play a game with you, if you don’t mind.”

Atem didn’t have a stick, neither of them had sticks. The dog whined and threw itself at him, the him with a crown and dignity. Its hind legs bounced and its front paws petted him down for play things. The dog-god sniffed, whined, barked, begged.

“I think he’s asking if you want to play with us,” the beggar king told him.

“What are we playing?”

“Oh,” the other him giggled pleasantly, “you’re not playing.  _We’re_  playing. But you can play with us, if you want.”

“Well,” he said, annoyed with himself, not himself-himself, but with the... the other one. “And how do I do that?”

The jackal leaped at Atem one final time, licked his arm, and took off back into the crossroads, with the beggar in its tracks at once.

“You follow the dog!”

“To where?” he shouted after them.

“Wherever he leads you!”

“But it’s the dog of d- I mean  _God_  of death!”

Atem woke up covered in sweat. Or rather, he dug himself out of the afterlife all the way up into his murky bedchamber.

He knew he wasn’t awake at once, not because of the strange texture of the world, but because he found himself under a body that was so much like his own, sweat sticking them together and swinging them to the rhythm of sleepy breathing.

Him – the other himself who wore clothes of a peasant at the crossroads – now wore no clothes and seemed unbothered by it, instead resting peacefully on Atem’s heart and embracing him between his soft and naked thighs.

And with that, Atem was very suddenly not dreaming about his curse or any dogs at all.

 

2.

When he did wake, it was to his sheets drenched in sweat and his heart beating against his ribcage like a trapped bird, not from pleasure, but from all-consuming dread.

In his delirium, he rummaged around the royal rooms until he found his crown exactly where he left it, on the jewellery table, and the face in the large brass mirror was still his own.

He dropped into the nearest daybed. There was rustling behind him, a wayward maid dusting his leisure rooms before bringing him breakfast, or perhaps a guard checking up on the commotion.

“Change my bedding,” he threw over his shoulder, his voice hoarse and hissing. “And fetch me Seto.” Then, a definitive moment later, “the blasted thief. Any news?”

Bakura was still hovering around the edges of the city, the guard told him. Itchy to enter, but afraid, like a coward. Like Atem. It consumed them both, Atem thought sometimes, the curse and the twenty-something various omens that went along with it, binding the damn thief to the pharaoh  and linking their faiths together as if Bakura had a drop of noble blood in him and Atem was of the same kin as that lowlife.

But what are they to do if his leaving the city – or the tomb robber entering it – could trigger their grand destines and whatever else flattering thing Isis called it when for all it was worth, it was just death at the end?

Have oddly specific prophetic dreams, is what they are to do.

He wondered if Bakura dreamt of such odd things.

“My king,” Seto, it turned out, was hovering right outside his door all night, waiting to be fetched. That, or Atem had lost all sense of time.

“Does the thief read?” he called from his leisure rooms and Seto didn’t have an answer for him. “I’m considering sending him a letter.”

“I don’t believe that’s… wise. If I may-?”

“The dreams,” Atem cut him off and then leaned further into his daybed to signal his lack of annoyance. “I wonder if he dreams them, too,” he cradled the Puzzle in his hand. The gold was cold and uncaring, and did nothing to ease his mind.

Seto said nothing and a rustle of linen told him his high priest had joined him in worrying his hands against the back of the daybed.

Not very polite, is it?

Atem turned to glare at him from underneath his fringe.

“I’d actually go look for _it_ , if you people weren’t so insistent about me not leaving the city.”

“Looking for a curse is unwise, my king, and also self-explanatory.”

How very helpful. 

“What difference does it make,” Atem hissed, punctuating each word. If an ill-wishing tone of a God-king could move actual literal mountains, then Seto was a much larger mountain than Atem would have liked because he, damn his ridiculous vertical accomplishments, remained unmoved. “If it’s arriving by morning anyway?”

“An omen is arriving by morning, your highness. Not your curse.”

Perhaps Atem should sleep instead of worrying. Seto’s bitchface was usually right, though Atem would never admit to it. Well. Sleep or otherwise. But his dream still lingered as sticky sweat on his skin, and just the thought someone trying to give him comfort made his teeth itch.

“Where are all the good whores,” he complained.

“In your harem, my king. It isn’t your lovers,” Seto said evenly and finally faced Atem, still respectfully looking to his side and not his eyes, never his eyes anymore. “It is not your council, or your enemies, or your prophets. The curse has made you restless.”

“And bored of waiting for it to hit.”

“And that,” Seto agreed.

Atem looked to his side where gentle wind worried the curtains to his royal verandas. The night was hot and airy so the doors weren’t shut. The sky was aging. He watched it. 

There was always a fleeting feeling of voyeurism and an inappropriate fascination in his heart when he dared to look up at goddess Nut’s nightly underbelly and admire the silky train of stars he knew to be her udders.

Well, this night was as beautiful as any, if he were to pay Nut’s tits a proper compliment.

“It’s ways until sunrise,” he said softly after a long while, and Seto agreed. “Seto, say. Where are the dogs right now?”

“The royal hunting dogs?”

Atem considered.

“No. The strays of the city. The dogs and the jackals, where do they go at night?”

Seto looked like he would inquire. There was a time when he would dare a question, and they would bicker and Atem would laugh at his friend and Seto would just stand around, stone-faced and silently laughing, too. There was a time, and it had slipped through the wide gaps between the rings on Atem’s fingers some time ago. “The docks, I would presume.”

The pharaoh hummed, swiped a hand under his fringe, wiped the sweat from his brow and presented it as fixing his hair. Seto just stood there, still as stone and very proper, with a combed mane and dressed fully in his priestly regalia as if he wasn’t just yanked out of bed by a king with a bad dream and a temper.

Atem bit his lip, resisted, resisted some more, gave up and snorted.

“Well, since you’re all up and dressed,” he said, laughing with his voice and grinning, “up for a stroll to the docks in the middle of the night?”

_‘I am not Mahad and you are not sixteen,’_  Seto should have told him. Instead, like a servant, he said nothing and came along.

 

3.  

The docks were not silent or empty at night. They sang the songs of town drunks and buzzed dully with sounds of freight being moved and gamblers complaining.

At least the rancid smell of fish or piss or both were mild on this particular pier where the few boats docked there were middle-class passenger vessels and not fishing tubs.

Atem worried an edge of his hood absently and looked for dogs.

His guards and shorter decoys, all inconspicuous and hooded in the same rough linen as him, chatted up sailors and passed as travelers seeking passage, as was their job.

Seto was at Atem’s side, presumably also looking for dogs under his feet.

There wasn’t a single one around, not even an old jackal or a bitch with puppies.

He considered complaining to Seto about his poor advice, but one sideways look at his high priest, and the way he studied the ground told Atem that he was already acutely aware of his failures, so he said nothing to at least be gentle about it.

“Maybe another pier,” he suggested kindly.

They shuffled between sailors and slaves, between slabs of stone and bags of spices, looked under logs and trash and people, and there were no dogs in any of the obvious places dogs should be.

The sky was growing brighter by the minute and their early start was catching up to them. Soon, Ra would sail across the sky in his flaming boat and surely then there will be dogs.

And then there was a dog.

A small one. Black. A jackal. With purple eyes, and they were the beastly eyes of Anubis himself, angry purple of hellfire burning in its irises.

There, at the far end of the pier, stood his damned  _omen_.

 

He chased it.

He chased it along the dock, and just when he thought he had the dog trapped, it leaped off the edge and into the water.

_‘Wherever he leads you,’_  Atem remembered with a wretched anticipation of nothing but cold in his gut when determination, the kind of determination that was probably less determination and more sleep deprivation, had sent him into the river after the dog.

Thing was, Atem could swim. Pretty well, too.

He could not outswim his dignity when it swam off into the sunrise, effectively abandoning him because what the hell did a king jump into the river for, but he could swim. 

And the small thing of a man who jumped in to rescue him very clearly could not.

Not even in the slightest.

So it wasn't him his distressed guards had to pull out of the river, it was his valiant rescuer. 

A short thing, bundled up in a cloak and hooded ridiculously, except the eyes.

The violet eyes of Anubis.

_There,_ Atem thought, _was his omen._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Wikipedia: "The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time."
> 
> This is the exact game Yugi plays against Anubis, and the story is written around it. But you aren't reading for Yugi. You're reading for Atem whose job is to observe from sidelines and look pretty in his shiny jewellery that's such a pain my butt to draw.
> 
> Please don't repost the art. :(
> 
> Any feedback is gr8 and thanks very much for reading!


	2. King's Gambit Accepted

What an extremely subtle and mysterious stranger.

How very inconspicuous.

An impeccable disguise, truly.

Pinnacle of subtlety.

 

 1.  

Atem arrested him. It was the logical thing to do. 

"And fetch me my crown," he demanded, trailing the arresting guards into a nearby temple. The hell-spawn was a priest, if his drab priestly hood wasn't stolen, so he might as well interrogate him in a priestly place. 

"He seems to know he's an omen," Seto told him in passing. 

Good. 

This will be easy, then. 

The small figure trembled at Atem’s feet when the stranger pressed his forehead to the stone floors of Isis’ temple on his own accord, clearly in awe to be in the presence of a God once some attendant finally got a crown on Atem's head. 

“State your intentions, priest of Asyut,” Seto told him, and so far there was nothing particularly offensive about this priest except maybe his stubbornly hooded face.

Really, someone should have unveiled the mystery by now, but apparently Atem was the only one interested. 

The priest hesitated, took a little longer than Atem would have liked, and mumbled an aborted ‘um’ before hissing to himself and mumbling, “I'm here for-" he cleared his throat and tired again, firmer this time. "I came here because Anubis sent me. That's all I know."

Atem actually snorted. His tutors would have been very be displeased, if he didn't fire them all. 

“Another priest dreaming of Gods, then. Groundbreaking,” Seto droned.

“No,” the little priest told Seto, almost lifting his head but catching himself and planting his forehead firmly back to the ground. “Anubis actually sent me here, please ask high priest Shada to do his thing with his key. And also forgive me for knowing things like that. You know, Anubis, and all.”

Atem nodded at Shada.

Why not.

He had time to kill.

A few minutes passed and nothing particularly interesting happened except Shada touched the Ankh to the priest’s robes and both of them just sort of stood there motionless for a while. Atem really wished he’d brought a snack.

When Shada finally moved, his face was scrounged up and he seemed displeased as he always was when a soul confused him.

“He is not lying,” he finally confirmed after some inner deliberation Atem had no desire hearing. 

He also had no problem taking whatever came of this as truth. If Shada saw it in his soul, then it must be so. 

What, then?

Had Anubis really sent child-sized priest from fucking Asyut to curse him and be done with it, then? By making him chase a blasted dog into a river?

As minutes of this tediously boring ordeal dropped into the sand cup, Atem was growing more and more aware of rage slowly poisoning his mind with venom and displacing his initial amusement.

He asked the priest on the floor what he wanted to know, directly, damn all the play of broken messenger with Seto to hell, and to his dismay the priest answered back, to him, not to Seto, the rude little shit.

“I am not here to curse you, your majesty. I don’t know the exact reason for my being here, except maybe Anubis’ personal amusement.”

“What _do_ you know?” Atem hissed, impatient, noting the dagger at Seto’s hip, “and what use are you to me alive, if dragging you out of that river was for nothing?”

“I…” the priest’s voice cracked in ever-familiar plea for mercy Atem had heard over and over when dull and worthless peasants cowered at his feet and scavenged their brains for some clever thing to say that would spare their lives. Spicy taste of adrenaline flooded Atem’s mouth at knowing that the thing at his feet knew it would die for being a pest within minutes. And it felt like… Atem had no word for it.

“Mm,” Atem lowered his eyelids half-way and licked his lips.

“I don’t know anything, my king. I don’t know, and what I know I can’t tell you right now. But if I were to guess a God’s intention of sending me to the God-king of Kemet…? Then I…”

And with that, the priest pushed his palms off the dusty stone slab and lifted his small body with his wobbling knees. Unsure. Anticipating. Clenching his pale fists in defiance as he dared to stand in the presence of a God without permission, as if his whole small existence was not weighted down by Atem’s massive glory.

“I think-” the priest reached for his hood, and his fingers were no longer trembling. Instead, they were loose, easy, inappropriately composed for the weight of the situation.

The little priest was a gambler, then.

Atem licked his lips again.

“-that Anubis sent me here as a joke.”

The stranger lifted his hood and grinned, not at all maliciously but Atem recoiled all the same.

Shocking. 

“Not a very funny joke though, I don’t think.”

It was a small creature with the stolen face of Horus - the one and very same Horus that inhibited Atem's earthly body, and the eyes of Anubis, a malicious thing to its very core. But the smile of the small priest was softer than anything Atem would afford to cross his own face, and his eyes were gentler than the welcome hand of death to a suffering soul.

The combination of alarm and appreciation sucked the air out of Atem’s lungs and his mouth was suddenly full of sand.

It was Mahad who thought to catch the creature by its dusty hood and haul it a safe distance away from the distressed pharaoh.

_Distressed_ pharaoh.

Pharaohs didn’t get distressed.

Atem cleared his throat, blinked his unease away and straightened his shoulders. Ra’s disk was well on its way across the sky by now and a stray beam of light caught on his gold shoulder pad and glared unpleasantly right into his eye, momentarily blinding him.

Atem blinked it away and shifted.

Despite being a good foot off the ground and getting manhandled by Mahad, the small priest beamed at Atem’s shuffling and almost giggled, brighter than the blasted sun glare did in the first place.

“You are an insult, more like. Or a test,” Atem finally declared and the priests seemed to agree. 

“Friends call me Yugi, your majesty.”

“One full of bad jokes, it seems,” Seto droned.

Mahad, being Mahad, chose to continue his long-standing tradition of saying nothing morally helpful, which he started doing once they were no longer children chasing cats around the royal yard. 

“He might have a purpose.”

“He said he doesn’t.”

“But his grace had said-”

“We must pray to Anubis for answers.”

“An insult, indeed.”

“Shut up!”

They did, bowing their heads in embarrassment and inspecting Isis’ floor for dirt. 

“Tedious children, bickering over the rules of tag, I swear,” Atem narrowed his eyes and the ones who dared to look up bowed even lower.

The little priest in Mahad’s headlock was the last to bow and avert his eyes. Atem marched to him and tapped his cheek with the back of his hand lightly.

The slap cracked the air around them and the stranger whined softly but said nothing.

Atem watched the cheek he struck get rosy where he struck it.

Pale skin.

And soft.

He traced his fingers over the warm mark he left. Smooth like ivory, and the right color for it, too. Not entirely ugly. Trailed a knuckle over the cheekbone, down the jaw.

Under the chin.

Tipped it.

The differences between them were subtle, and if anyone would dare question Atem about it, he would never admit to his own vanity. But he knew the curves of Yugi’s face to be softer than his own, his lips – he traced a thumb over them and was pleased with their wet softness – rosier.

The stranger was a sweeter version of him, with his warm eyes and their horrifying color, but nearly identical and, thank you Anubis for not having his insult metaphorically hit him below the belt, shorter.

_Pretty_ , Atem admitted to himself, but only because he happened to think himself the pinnacle of handsomeness and therefore anyone who looked so strikingly like him had to inherit Atem’s undeniable beauty by default.

The stranger blinked at him and his long lashes tickled Atem’s knuckle.

“A test, I think,” he decided, and figured he better call it as it was, “for vanity.”

Under the weight of his embarrassment, Seto did not smirk in any physical capacity.

But he was absolutely laughing at him, and Atem knew he meant it.

“Oh, shut up, Seto.”

“I was not aware that I spoke, my king. Forgive me.”

Atem rolled his eyes, and pretty as Yugi was, this whole ordeal was running on its last fumes of entertainment.

“Well, if Anubis insists on fucking with me,” he savored watching some priest in the back flinch, “let him be as _bored_ with his joke as I am.”

He tipped the stranger’s chin one more time and inspected him from both sides before dropping his hand and turning on his heel.

Seto was at his side immediately.

“What shall we do with him?” Mahad managed when it was obvious nobody else would ask.

“Him? Nothing. He’s a traveling priest from blasted Asyut, isn’t he? Receive him as a priest, then. He will do whatever it is that you people do in your temples. I don’t care. Don’t bother me with him again.”

Once he was far enough that the priests thought they were out of his earshot, they began to bicker again, and this time a pleasant and shy voice joined them in their petty argument.

“I would’ve had him killed,” he told Seto when they were out of the temple.

“I am surprised you did not. Very rude, that one.”

“Oh, but did you see it?”

“The gambit, my king?”

Atem made a noise of agreement and started down the massive steps, his mood brighter than it was before the sunrise when he was chasing dogs in the dock.

“He impressed you, then, my pharaoh?”

“He was pretty,” Atem said evenly, and then: “shut up, Seto.”

 

2.

 In reality, Atem had only a vague idea of what priests actually did in their temples. He knew from many civil complaints that priests liked to pray to Gods for the welfare of the people. Asterisk: in exchange for goods and services, the former being money from the rich lords, and the later being daughters of poor craftsmen.

It wasn’t an entirely faulty system until the lords started stealing his taxes and girls got hurt, and he bid his council to resolve these sorts of complaints by a necessary amount of casual executions. That usually made the priests that remained sort themselves out for at least a few seasons.  

So when Atem took lunch in his chambers and heard the royal guards whispering about the new priest requesting for a carpenter’s daughter to come visit him on the very same day he arrived, Atem rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed.

What did he even do to offend Anubis?

And where had they put up the little priest, anyway, for his personal guards to know about it so quickly?

Atem pressed his ear to the heavy wooden door and absently chewed a grape from his lunch platter.

“-got a chamber off the main palace, in the guest manor. Lucky son of a bitch, the harem is just on the other side of the complex,” one of the guards whispered to the other and what followed that was filth about cocks and tits and fucking, and Atem completely lost interest in it in favor of more grapes.

The weekend shift of guards was much more entertaining than the weekday one. Those gossiped about actual relevant palace things and were also much more attractive and therefore didn’t sound so desperately thirsty when they talked about cocks and tits and fucking.

And then there was no more filthy gossip just beyond his door.

Atem cleared his throat, tipped his crown back to its proper place where it scratched the hell out of his brow and sat upright on the cushioned lounger.

An expected knock.

He let an uneaten grape roll down his fingers and drop back onto the platter.

Its escape was short-lived. Atem impaled it with a fork, all nice and proper.

“Mn,” he acknowledged.

It was one of the high priests. The shifty one with the Eye, the one priest Atem inherited from his father. The least interesting one, and the most suspicious.

“Aknadin,” Atem ate the grape from his fork and let his teeth drag up the silver with a faint scrape. “What?”

The high priest bowed low, as if that would gain him any favor.

“My king, I came to wish you well and apologize for the-”

“I don’t care,” really, “what do you want?”

The Sennen Eye glittered and the old man’s unwashed hair had a greasy and pearly sort of shine to it. Suspicious. Very suspicious.

“As you know, my king, the prophe-”

“On with it!”

The priest of questionable highness reeled.

“Another omen failed to deliver your curse. My king, so far, we’ve received no actual curse, not even a prophet to tell us of what your curse actually entails,” he stuttered with a lot more force than was strictly necessary. “Perhaps… my king, perhaps the curse is null. Perhaps it’s time to leave the city and resume-”

“Resume what?” he said, choosing to focus on selecting the variety of cheese cubes he wanted instead of his supposedly trusted advisor. “The sun still rises each morning, the kingdom runs as it should. Isis and Mahad tell me the Necklace and the Ring shriek whenever I wonder too far from the capital. The Puzzle-” Atem’s gaze involuntarily dropped to the golden pyramid, a heavy weight on his chest, “-the Puzzle is my own business.”

“My king-”

“If you think me a coward, Aknadin,” he placed his hands on the little round table and began his assent from the cushioned chair, “I will have you executed. If you think me a fool, I will have you replaced with someone not half-blind.”

Aknadin bowed his one-eyed head and Atem tried to glare as Seto would, inside his mind and not with his face.

He was not Seto and it didn’t work.

“I only meant,” the old man muttered, “with no disrespect, to say that his majesty has allowed a wooden gift-horse from Anubis himself into his palace. It is… unwise, your grace. It is all I meant to say, forgive me.”

Ah. “The Trojan horse,” he mused, “is the priest with my face. Right. Hm,” the goat cheese looked the best, anyway. “He is not in my palace. He is in the guest house closest to the harem. There are enough guards in his way.”

Whatever Aknadin was about to say, it caught in his throat and he only managed, “how did my wise king know so quickly-”

Atem waved him off, as if such pesky things were well within his divine knowledge and beyond Aknadin’s understanding.

“Have you anything else to bother me with?”

“He has-”

“Requested a girl, yes,” to his satisfaction, Aknadin shifted apprehensively again and Atem let his tremendous wisdom sink in before continuing. “I don’t care. On your way out, summon a guard, will you?”

In the end, he ended up caring enough to send the guard to spy on the little priest.

The replacement guard was a tall man with a nasty smile.

His gossip was mostly about how he preferred the after-hours service of his favorite mouthy sandal slave. It was gross.

 

3 .

“He sent the girl back with _what_?”

“Scrolls, your holiness. Only an hour after she entered to his room.”

Atem blinked, scratched his temple just beneath his crown and thought about it.

“Are minor priests even literate?”

The guard didn’t know.

“Well, fetch one and ask, will you?”

The answer, after much quivering and sweating, turned out to be a solid ‘no.’

“Hm,” he thought, “stop the girl and search her. If the scrolls are stolen, kill her, bring me the priest.”

The guard had almost left to complete his task before he thought to ask what to do if the scrolls were not stolen.

Atem hadn’t really thought of that.

“If it’s nothing suspicious, I suppose get a scribe and copy whatever it is, and send her on her way. And fetch Seto. I seem to have developed a kink for being annoyed.”

It was Seto to kneel before him in the throne room with scrolls under his arm.

“Come,” he coaxed and Seto was counting the carved steps up to his throne momentarily, as if his immediate summon was expected. “The priest?”

“In the temple, preparing for the evening prayers, my pharaoh. We let the carpenter’s daughter go.”

Atem nodded at the scrolls, his eyebrows furrowing under his heavy crown.

“Copies. It was a woodwork order. He seems to want something carved, and quickly. He paid a fair price for the lower town’s best craftsman.”

He took the scrolls Seto handed to him and ignored the bow.

“We gave him money already?”

Seto seemed unimpressed.

“A retainer. As we do for all priests. As per your orders to treat him as such.”

Atem paused in the middle of unrolling the parchment to squint at Seto.

“Tell me what the priests actually do. Not the important ones. I mean the other ones.”

Seto radiated benevolence and patience with his king’s query which only made Atem annoyed.  All according to Seto’s plan, he supposed.

“They take bribes and lay with whores. Occasionally beg the Gods for favors.”

“That’s what I thought,” the pharaoh agreed. “I bet this,” he waved the scroll and snorted, “is a request for a wooden cock.”

It was not a request for a wooden cock.

Rather, it was a square with tiles of alternating dark and light color, copied haphazardly by a speedy scribe, smudged where the ink hadn’t dried.

A senet board? But no, this one was much larger, and the grid was colored.  

“A spell board?” Atem considered and exchanged the first scroll for the last, which Seto handed to him almost gingerly. “Now these have to be tiny wooden cocks, ha!”

It was obvious that this scroll, too, contained no tiny wooden cocks, but instead two sets of sixteen pieces, one shaded, one blank.

“Tactical pieces, for strategies in military conquests,” Atem recognized immediately, although the shapes were not what he was used to. “But the spell board is definitely not a map, hm.”

A nod.

“Most suspicious, although,” Seto took back the scrolls and handed them to a servant who bowed low and scurried to have several copies of Yugi’s order made for the royal court, “Isis senses no malice in your little priest. None, whatsoever. He spoke to several tenants of the guest house and they all report he is friendly.”

“Still. Those are military pieces he ordered. Did he bring with him any maps?”

“No, your grace.”

“Then what did he bring,” Atem gritted, “except my face?”

Seto considered the question, and instead gave him a quizzical look, and very suddenly Atem had no more patience for any answers or anymore proxy spying.

“Never mind,” he tilted his head back and the tips of his hair slid down his bare shoulders. It tickled, and he combed through his fringe to push all of it back and, inevitably, a few stubborn strands got stuck in his crown.

He blinked at his leisure and suppressed the urge to fix it.

“Fetch me a- hm,” he threw Seto a measuring look before descending the stairs, “fetch me someone who fetches things.”

A good hour later, Atem sure was doing a lot of caring for someone who did not care about Anubis’ little joke at all.

The room they’d put him up in was so unremarkable that Atem paid little mind to it as he ruffled through Yugi’s personal possessions, however few the little priest had managed to carry with him all the way from Asyut.

It wasn’t much.

A few boxes, one small, the size of Atem’s palm, wrapped in purple paper and tied securely with a twine. Too light to be stone, too heavy to be hollow.

Atem scraped his nail over the rough surface of parchment, considering the value of whatever treasure hid underneath. He would have to cut the secure knot, and that wasn’t exactly inconspicuous, though what did he care if the priest knew his things were searched?

The other box was a sleek black stone tablet, with silver trim, rounded corners and a reflective surface. Smooth. A hand-sized black gem set in silver, or maybe a mirror. He looked into it and Yugi’s soft features stared back at him, thoughtfully.

 He hissed and nearly dropped the offensive thing, caught his breath and glared at it with very un-kingly indignation. Last time he’d seen him, the little priest hadn’t stolen his crown or his eyes.

He peered into it again and the hairs on the back of his neck began to relax: his own face glared back at him, annoyed. A mirror, then.

A sack of richly colored dark clothes felt fine beneath his appraising touch, with fine metal trim and odd circles, smooth and delicate to the eyes. Then, there was something that resembled a shirt, made out of fine black leather.  And about fifty million silver buckles.

The clothes he wore in the dream, before he turned a beggar. Because why not taunt Atem some more?

Finally, there was a small studded leather purse, but it had a trick lock and Atem could not get it to open for him.

Anubis had given the little priest so little to bring with him on his journey. Atem returned his attention to the wrapped purple package, it being the only thing left aside from the thick silver chain that should have had some sort of pendant or a medallion on it but was plain instead.

The package. There must be a knife somewhere. 

“Um.”

Well. To be fair, he told the royal guards to look busy and not bother him for any reason.

The small thing – Yugi, wasn’t it? – mashed his sandaled feet into the ground and stared at the floor right by the door which had closed behind him and cut off any chance for him to escape seamlessly.

Atem paid him little attention, instead focusing on finding something which would cut the twine.

Nothing of his demeanor or body language suggested the stranger could speak to him.

Nothing. He made sure of it.

And yet.

“Should I, um…” he saw the priest wring his hands from the corner of his eye, “maybe I should come back when you’re done going through my stuff, your majesty?”

“My majesty,” Atem hummed. “What a rude little thing you are. Where do you keep knives, rude thing?”

“I…”

By the time the pharaoh finally turned to face him, the priest had shrunk against the doorway. But it was a little late for him to pretend he wasn’t outright gawking at his God-king. Atem caught his purple gaze and pinned it with his own.

Dumbly, Yugi shut his eyes, realized how dumb that was, opened them again and stared back, which was even dumber.

“Are you even aware how much treason you’re committing?”

“I… I really wasn’t aware, I’m sorry.”

Atem watched him sway from one foot to another in idle fascination, considered the package, and dropped it. The guest quarters weren’t spacious, and it was a short stroll. He planted his feet firmly, their toes almost touching, scent of clean ivory skin entering his senses like a spring breeze.

He watched him then, expecting the stranger with his face to recoil or shy away, considering it would take only a small push for their bodies to touch, but Yugi planted his feet and held out. 

Suspicious. Offensive, but worth inspecting.

Atem sized him up, traced his gaze over his jaw, his cheek, his neck, down his shirt sleeve and to his fingertips. They weren’t trembling.

“You have a tell for when you’re bluffing,” Atem purred, satisfied as he took the paler hand into his own, perhaps to prove a point, perhaps not. Yugi sucked in a breath but held his ground. A soft hand, Atem noted, none of the rough calluses of a peasant or even a servant.

Not unlike the idle hands of the harem girls.

Anubis _wouldn’t_. Would he?

“Are- are you a whore?” he hissed, startled by his own conclusion. It showed in his voice.

Yugi actually jumped.

“What!?” he practically tore his hand out of Atem’s grasp before ducking from under the pharaoh and retreating. “No!” he looked at his hand where Atem held it, as if burned, then to Atem, to his hand, back to Atem, “no, not like that, oh God…s, your majesty, _no_.”

There was a kink in his back and Atem straightened it out, preened his ruffled feathers and tilted his head in polite disinterest. The routine took a minute, and by then they both had their senses back.

“And, er, your majesty, it’s not a bluff.”

“Hn?”

“The hand twitch thing,” Yugi bit his lip in embarrassment and inspected his sleeve. “I never really had much confidence as a child. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that I’m not that person anymore. It’s not a bluff. I don’t really bluff.”

“A tell for when you’re gambling, then.”

“Yes,” the coy smile was a cute look on him. Atem’s insides burned with displeasure at seeing his own face polluted by _that_.

“What are you gambling, then?”

“Well, my life, obviously, ever since I came here.”

“A gamble you just lost,” he mused dryly. “I’ll have you executed by morning.”

Instead of dropping to his knees and begging, or at the very least trying to be a little less _rude_ , Yugi _beamed_ at him, brightly, his teeth biting down his impossibly wide grin and his eyes smiling in genuine pleasure.

“Now that, your majesty, is a bluff if I’ve ever seen one.”


	3. Bishop’s Gambit

 

1.

"He knows Anubis will think me a fool if I kill his little gift horse right after accepting it,” Atem paced the royal champers and Seto watched him, very distressed to see his king in such great peril, obviously. “So he thinks he can get away with being downright vulgar!”

“Then perhaps my king should revisit his initial solution of ignoring Yugi’s existence.”

“Yugi! Yugi to you, is he, now?”

Seto’s expression shifted from complete neutrality to complete neutrality.

“He is very friendly.”

The pharaoh rubbed the bridge of his nose and counted his rings. There were too many and he was bored with the count before could calm himself.

“I should’ve had him executed on day one,” he hissed through his teeth.

“Tonight marks the end of day one, my king. If I may?”

His priest offered him no concession for readable facial expressions. Instead, he simply continued sitting on Atem’s daybed with his hands politely in his lap, in the furthest corner from the fruit plate, cushions, and Atem. 

His wrap wasn’t pristine and there was black dust under his piercing eyes. Even Seto’s glare, the pharaoh noted, wasn’t as piercing.

In fact, Seto wouldn’t even look at him.

A moth fluttered inside Atem’s heart and the world slowed a little and gained some color. Five rings. Eight. Ten. Twelve.

When done, he approached Seto, cleared the cushions and sat next to him with quiet grace.

“Of course you may,” he said with a softer voice. “I’ve worried you. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Your grace should do as he pleases,” was Seto’s stiff reply. A pause. His priest inspected him instead of inspecting a wall. “With the gift of Anubis, I meant, pardon.”

“Of course that is what you meant,” he licked the inside of his teeth and swallowed the words he wouldn’t say. “Then I will. With the gift of Anubis, obviously,” he threw Seto a pointed look, which his priest accepted without any regard.

With that, their conversation rolled to a halt at an impossible intersection, and Atem would have missed it completely if Seto’s stiffness didn’t slam him into the reality of their respective positions.

“As my proud king will,” Seto nodded, but it looked rather like a curt bow. It took Atem another soft look to coax him into continuing the conversation. “Are there any state updates you require?”

_Some conversation._

“As you will.”

“The thief moved to Kings’ Valley. The bandits set up camp near the stone mason shack town.”

“Are both across the rift? The one with a single supply line?”

“Yes.”

“Burn the bridge.”

 “We will, come nightfall.”

“Already? On whose orders?”

“Your grace has appointed Aknadin in his absence. His strategy appears to be the same as yours.”

“I wasn’t absent.”

“The council,” Seto tried, much too carefully for Atem’s liking, “deemed the thieves not to be a cause for concern and therefore didn’t wish to interrupt my king’s… daily pursuits.”

_Again with the little priest!_

 “Then perhaps I should acquire a council with enough balls to approach me,” he said evenly. “Afraid I will execute another one, are they? Fine. The short one, with the bald head,” he made a vague gesture with his hands, “the one who smells of meat and the guards say tried to fuck a horse once. With the jewelry. His existence annoys me. Hang him. Bring in Isis.”

A pause.

“What?”

“As my king pleases.”

Atem rolled his eyes at Seto in defeat, knowing he lost him for the day.

“No, really. What? Is it Isis? She has enough to manage, I know. Shuffle her duties. I want her on the council. Or is it that I’m staffing the council with too many high priests?”

Seto nodded and stood to his full height with his head bowed. Atem hadn’t moved an inch from his spot amongst the daybed cushions, and Seto’s brown hair touched his knees when his priest bowed him a respectful farewell.

“That is exactly what I meant, your grace. Is there anything else you require?”

Atem dismissed him with a wave and popped a grape.

“There have been no further omens of the curse, so your highness should get some sleep,” he bid.

“As should you. You look terrible.”

If Seto knew Atem said ‘terrible’ when he meant ‘worried for your fucking life,’ he made no sign of it. He left with the grace of a gliding tower with sails.

_Tall people and their problems._

And then, _short little priest people and their everything!_

Atem dreamt of ivory skin underneath his fingernails and gentle purple eyes looking up at him from beneath a mess of familiar hair.

There were fingers digging into is his shoulders, each piercing his skin with bright light, and he wanted nothing more than to have that light stay by him forever.

Soft thighs embraced him and he felt more welcome there than he had in his palace, surrounded by warmth and tightness and an unyielding sensation of not just owning but _belonging_.

He woke with clammy palms and drenched in sweat.

He woke to a drying mess across his thighs and stomach, writhing in his sheets and chewing his lips bloody.

 

2.

The board and the military pieces were at his feet early morning. He permitted the stonemason to kiss his feet and ordered the throne room vacated for him and his thoughts.

Some mage that wasn’t Mahad had assured him the material didn’t matter, as long as the pieces and the tiles alternated in dark and light colors and were made to be identical. He had also assured Atem that neither the board nor its pieces had any magical significance.

Just to be sure and because Mahad nodded at each of the irrelevant sorcerer’s words as if he were a particularly agreeable owl, he sent a copy of the board to the training grounds.

“My Mana would tell me for sure. It’ll take days, but she will be of more help than the lot of you.”

“Shall we summon her?”

“Ask for a message. Or a letter. Next priest who isn’t Mahad to suggest giving orders to my Mana will be hung.”

And with that, each breath he took echoed around the gold walls of the throne room, bounced off golden statues and fell on his the deaf ears of his guards.

“Never quite alone, am I?” he said into the empty hall. “Fine.” He flipped the heavy board around, noting the craftsmanship. The marble tiles fit together seamlessly, as if grafted from the same checkered slab. It was much better than whatever Yugi would get from a common woodshop.  

The tile count was eight up and eight down, the color of milky pearls and gray sand snakes, framed with rich wood.

He leaned over the arm of his rigid throne, reached for the box on the floor and considered his selection.

The piece that caught his eye was neither the tallest nor the most ornate. It was the only one to catch a stray glimmer of light, from a torch or maybe some of Ra’s escaped grace, and it winked at him gleefully so he plucked it from the pile.

The cool stone grew heavy in his hand when he recognized it for what it was. The unmistakable double crown of upper and lower kingdom topped off its white hourglass body.

A king. The white one. Its soft ivory color shone cheerfully. Its twin, the dark king, sparkled like a cheap jewel.

Logic. 

With that, the living Horus slipped off his throne and glided down the gold steps.

 His stride was a soundless march amongst the clang of metal spears that flanked him, wielded by men twice his breadth and none of his piety. The procession sailed down the pillars of the coronation hall and spilled into the courtyard where the dirt was a mosaic of colored tiles and slaves, attendants, and royals of various importance, all dropping to their knees and getting their foreheads dusty.

Two attendants, both his, hurried to his side as he began his descent down a thousand carved steps and off the main palace grounds.  One draped the royal plum cape over his shoulders and fastened it to his shoulder plates without slowing the convoy or tripping over his feet. The other bowed low and inspected him, slippers to neck, made note of the ivory king getting sticky in his clutched hand, and wordlessly waved over a litter party.

Porters sat the carriage before him just as his foot touched the sand. He climbed the litter without a pause, and sat.

The porters didn’t miss a beat. 

“Temple of Isis,” the attendant tasked with reading his mood ordered them, and he was not wrong.

The slaves lifted the vessel and the convoy proceeded down the streets of the outer palace, all creating noise and commotion in the name of the king, all except the king.

The city’s main temple of Isis was half an hour away by procession and a quarter of an hour away by foot.

Atem was notorious for visiting it never, and yet there he was, at the foot of its great entry pillars, interrupting an afternoon service that he knew only a handful of priests and even fewer residents of the palace complex actually attended.  

A minor priest who was clearly not one of them spat the lunch he was eating on the stone steps, wiped his mouth, bowed and mumbled, “m-my king, Isis w-welcomes his holiness to partake in prayer in Her house, we were unaware his majesty wa-”

The nuisance was done with a brisk wave of his hand and the air was at peace with the sky once more.

The army of guards at his flank dissipated along the steps and only four entered the temple with him where only four priests were praying silence to an empty altar on their hands and knees.

One of them was small and had a mop of unruly hair, and Atem idly acknowledged that this is what the back of his own head must look like.

Never let it be said that Atem had wronged the Gods.

He approached the altar, lit a stick of incense and threw it on top of the disappointing pile of offerings in the middle, said his greetings to Goddess Isis and backed where someone had already set a cushion for him.

He knelt, gracefully, and prayed in silence for health of his nation and some goddamn peace.

The service ended when the priests were done. One by one, the guards escorted the ones of no value to him until only he and his small facsimile remained.

Atem was the first to rise. Once he did, he adjusted his posture and realized he was still clutching the white king in his clammy hand, sticky, and not at all dignified.

“Rise, priest. Say something about having to finish your prayer first and I will have you whipped.”

It took Yugi too long of a moment to rise, and Atem suspected the little thing had the gull to defy him and hastily finish his prayer anyway.

 If his mood was already sour, the little defiance made it rancid.

“Your majesty, Isis is pleased to welcome you,” he said in custom.

“Hn. Never mind Isis. What is _this_?”

Yugi looked up just as Atem threw the blasted king piece at him. He scurried to catch it, but it bounced off his hand with a smack and clattered to the floor.

For a moment, Atem thought it shattered and his rage filled him with venom, but it was just the temple echo scattering the sound into a million pieces as its body remained whole.

“Ow,” Yugi said, rubbing his arm and then apologizing as he went to retrieve the piece.

Once he got it, he seemed in no hurry to answer the query.

“Well?” Atem demanded.

“Wh- oh. I just. I didn’t think this existed here. How did you get this, your majesty?”

“Don’t play fool you damn _caricature_ , explain the meaning of this because I haven’t known you for two days and I’m contemplating offending all Gods and the Gods’ Gods and putting your head on a spike, now answer me or-”

“Okay! Okay sorry, okay! It’s a king, a piece for the-”

“Did you just _interrupt_ me!?” he roared, and the remaining guard that was as good as not there would have thrown the priest to his knees if Atem didn’t start for him himself, fists clenched and lips tight.

The small thing winced and managed to back two short paces before Atem caught him by the throat and slammed him into a pillar.

He was staring at him with his foul eyes, speaking over him, breathing his air, how dare he, how _dare_ he, Atem was livid and in his fury made him deaf to the words he spilled until they hissed from between his teeth, “how dare you _exist_ ,” he told him, how dare he, the Puzzle hissed in agreement, and he shook the priest and felt no better.

What happened next felt like a gentle tide of warmth over Atem’s heart, right above the puzzle, and delayed dreadfulness washed over him when he realized he wouldn’t know his own rage from a poisoned blade Yugi might have wedged between his ribs. 

There was still a pale throat between his fingers, skin elastic and giving. The poisoned purple irises stared at him through hooded eyelids.

He could choke him right here. A bit more pressure, and his grasp would turn into a stranglehold.

And yet there was warmth in Atem’s heart.

He looked down his body expecting to see a dagger in his chest where his heart should be, except the Gods saw it fit to prove he had no heart, and whatever Yugi stabbed, it was hollow and shrunken.

Instead, he saw a small hand pressed to his chest, under the plate of his collar, above the Puzzle, clutching at his clothes.

Not even pushing him away.

Just searching for his heart.

“Ugh!” he shouted and dislodged his fingers from Yugi’s pale throat. No, that was not what he wanted, either. “Ugh,” he screamed again, grabbed the priest by the hair and pressed their faces together.

“What do I want from you?” he seethed, and they both panted, breathing each other’s air for a long moment.

Ten, twenty, twenty six steps down the throne. 

Finally, he knocked their foreheads together.

“I don’t want you dead, I don’t think,” he purred right by the shell of Yugi’s ear. “I could have you beaten. I would watch.”

But no.

He pressed his lips to the outer curve and dragged them up to the soft temple where the bone had just started and the hollow of Yugi’s cheek was plush.

“I could…” he slid the palm of his hand down the rough linen of the priestly robe and Yugi jolted as if burned. No matter, his fingers had just found soft skin, right under the knee, and he tugged at the leg he caught until it wrapped around him and pressed his hip into the tender dip in Yugi’s thigh.

He felt no desire to be there. “Not this, either,” he whispered and trailed mock kisses down the pale jaw.

“What else. Prison. Torture. Torture and prison. I could have you fucked. Exiled. Sold,” he punctuated each atrocity with a peck or a kiss until the toxic coals of his anger turned into ash. “None of this is what I want.”

He untangled his fingers from Yugi’s hair and gave him a few inches to breathe, if only to study his expression.

Yugi looked like many things, and properly mortified was not one of them. Atem bit his lip and reached for the hair again, ignored the violent flinch of alarm, and attempted to smooth down the tussled crown of the second most unruly head of hair in the whole of Kemet.

“So what do I do with you?” he mused quietly, right into the rosy lips of the priest, catching them with his vowels.

A whisper: “what did you come here to do?”

“Why do you keep _speaking_ to me,” he whispered back.

“If you don’t want me to answer your questions, stop talking to me. Stop stalking me. Stop coming to my room and my temple. Stop.”

Atem was depleted. Too mentally exhausted to properly deal with Yugi’s offences, he just hissed, “my cursed stay in this world will be short, they say. I am a God. I will do as I please.”

“Well,” Yugi hissed back wryly and shifted in his grasp. Their bodies pressed together more and Yugi could not possibly be more comfortable with so much of Atem’s jewellery digging into him, except he managed to free his hair and lower himself from tiptoes so that their heights no longer matched. “I can’t tell you how the Gods cursed you, but I think you and I both know _why_.”

In the end, all Atem had the energy to say on the matter was:

“Rude.”

They were so close that the heat of the summer day in the desert made sweat form between their sticky bodies. It was one of the reasons activities where two people were in such proximity to one another were best reserved for the night, be it fighting or fucking.

 He wasn’t sure whose sweat rolled down whose thigh, but they both felt it tickle down their skin and Yugi was almost shy about it, squirming suddenly and averting his eyes.

Aha. Well. At least the little devil wasn’t immune to _all_ of Atem’s graces. He looked him over again, this time looking for passion instead of offensive quirks, and found himself not particularly interested.

Hm. Possibly later. Possibly.

“Wait for me outside the throne room at dawn,” he ordered, dislodging himself and dropping Yugi’s weight. The gust of air between their bodies when they parted was nothing short of a personal oasis. “And bring me a fucking explanation of the sorcery Anubis would have you do with two identical king puppets that resemble us _both_ , two armies, and a damn board.”

Yugi, who took his release to mean he could go about straightening his clothes and looking for a reason to remove himself from the temple, choked on nothing and first said, “I.. you… you thought-”and then, almost angrily, “I think your majesty can figure that out for _himself_.”

Atem turned on his heel.

“You _will_ come to the throne room at dawn,” he commanded and heard no further back talk. 

Once he found more than one guard flanking him, he summoned the one who was with them in the temple with a finger.

The guard bowed low and presented his ear.

“If anyone saw that, put them to the sword.”


	4. A Mistake

 

1. 

“I beg my king for permission to leave his side,” was Atem’s first order of business for the day. Seto knelt before the throne in all of his official capacity, with his personal guards on both sides of him, dressed in formal silks and meaningful hats. “The tablet temples west of the city require attention. Mahad and Shada’s assistance is… necessary. We shall return in three nights’ time, my king and Gods permitting.”

Mahad and Shada. On a better day, without an outstanding omen warning Atem against leaving the city, it would be Seto accompanying Atem to tend the spirit monster temples.

And Seto was  _official_.

So very official.

“And you didn’t think to tell me this sooner?” he accused evenly, and his eyes burned holes in Seto’s hat. “That a quarter of my council is to abandon me for three days?”

Seto’s shoulders tensed under his cape, as if recovering from a nasty sunburn. He’ll be fine, Atem decided, Seto should be able to take criticism.

“The Gods do not send omens to prophesize omens,” Seto said, much quieter, yielding. “Forgive me, your grace, for not being of use to you on such matters.”

“Hn,” Atem hummed, tempted to clear the court and confront Seto… no, tempted to clear the court to _scream_ at Seto for not just asking him in his private rooms over some grapes. It was insulting to them both, this whole charade of formalities in his court, like Seto had lost all his favor and risked being thrown to the river crocodiles at any moment.

Atem’s fingers twitched for it and his leg would not stop tapping an anxious rhythm against the floor. Not because of Seto or his little official stunt, but because the morning at the temple of Isis with the little priest’s neck between his fingers had planted a beetle of rage in the back of his mind and it would not stop gnawing at him no matter what he did to distract himself.

He could clear the court, but Seto’s bowed frame trembled ever so slightly, probably because of the excessive bowing, so Atem decided to be kind.

 

A very kind face.

“Fine. Go,” he dismissed his High Priest with a feeling the tall man will not visit Atem to bid him a more appropriate farewell in private. “Next.”

It was Aknadin.

“I don’t care. Next.”

The rest of the day had put him in a sour mood.

His last order of business had been yet another totally and absolutely legitimate prophet who came to foretell Atem’s great curse, about the fifth he had in a day. 

“…and I respectfully ask his majesty the great pharaoh of the upper and lower Kemet that the reward for foretelling of his great curse goes tome instead of my family, since the Gods have not blessed me with a family. For instead they blessed me with visions!” He was a lame greasy man dressed in dyed linens and mismatched jewels, all of which he doubtless thought were very impressive. Greed glittered in his eyes. The guards have advised Atem that this man was a traveling minister from some irrelevant city who, on his way to the palace, had skipped his bill at the local tavern, stolen money form a blind beggar, cat-called a group of underage girls, and kicked a puppy.  

Atem’s childhood tutors were worth their keep and he had an excellent gambling face because of the lessons he only pretended to learn.

He measured the minister with an uncaring glance and kept his chin up.

“Advisor,” he said with an air of indifference and inspected one of his rings, “ask this man if he knows why the reward for telling cursed prophesies goes to the family of the prophet.”

“His majesty the great pharaoh of the upper and lower Kemet wishes to hear what you know of prophesy reward law,” his short advisor relayed in a kind voice, as he always did.

“That my king’s generosity is boundless?” the minister tried, unsure.

“No,” whoever polished Atem’s jewelry was satisfactory at their job, he decided. “It is spousal maintenance. Gods choose prophets and we collect their lives when the prophesies are told. This only applies to curses, but such is the will of the Gods. It is a royal law to thank the prophets for their service and give them peaceful deaths. It is holy law to grant the prophets safe passage to the afterlife.”

The minister’s petrified face cracked Atem’s mask and he leered.

“So,” there was unkind laughter in his voice, “shall you tell me your prophesy, minister, or shall you confess to lying to your pharaoh?”

At the end of it, Atem decided to spare the floors of his throne room and save the cleaning slaves some labor. There were execution grounds for such things.

It was an hour after dusk when he remembered the little priest whose taste pleased his tongue and whose endless word vomit and manner were absolutely atrocious. There, just outside the throne chambers, was little Yugi, waiting for him.

Atem hadn’t arranged for a concubine to wait for him in his rooms. No one made a move to remind him because he was never consistent with his requests for company.

Today, he simply forgot, but he chose to take it as affirmation that perhaps all his frustrations with the priest had an elegant and messy solution between his sheets. By the way he handled his morning with the priest, he was sure his mind was telling him something very specific on a subconscious level.

Ah, but never mind. It had slipped his mind that the source of his frustrations was the priest’s defiance.

There was no reason to think the priest came at all.

And if he had, did he wait for him just outside those heavy doors for an hour with anticipation running though his veins, or had he simply waited a polite minute and dared to leave?

He seemed the sort to do both.

Atem ordered the room cleared of court and advisers before he addressed a guard.

“Is the short priest with my face waiting outside this chamber?”

The guard nodded curtly and a bubbly tide washed over Atem’s insides. He bit his lip and grinned because nobody was there to see it.

He was almost out of his throne when he remembered.

“Oh, right. The stone dolls with the board. Fetch me that.”

If the priest had waited for an hour, he will suffer to wait longer, as long as Atem needed.

Atem sat in his throne in an empty room for another quarter of an hour because he could.

 

 2.

“Your board with pieces is a game,” Atem said to the hallway without looking Yugi’s way when the priest jumped to his feet from the floor. Sitting in the dirt. Atem exhaled evenly and made no comment. Really, _how graceful and desirable_.

“Your majesty,” was all the priest said as greeting. His uneven hiccups of steps were noise to the rhythmic tempo of Atem’s smooth glide down the hall to his private charmers.

He was satisfied the priest realized he was expected to follow, and impressed that the priest said nothing else and didn’t force Atem’s hand to have him beaten in public for insolence.

It didn’t last.

Yugi started chattering away the very moment the doors of Atem’s private rooms closed behind them.

“Your majesty is right, it’s a game. I’d show you, if I may?” he gestured to the box Atem carried with glee and something akin to friendly competition.

What did it matter?

Atem left him with the box and turned his back to him, choosing instead to drop some of his bracelets into a jewelry plate. Next came off the heaviest of his plated necklaces, the ceremonial heirloom he only wore to court and lost or had ‘cleaned’ at earliest opportunities because it irritated his collarbones and made his shoulders ache under its weight.

He reached for the lock at the back of his neck and couldn’t help but arch his spine in pleasure, having spent the day in a metal chair. The metal chair was brutal, and Atem would have it padded, except he already had it lowered because his Father was a perfectly average man and Atem, well, wasn't. Padding it felt somehow inappropriate, despite what it would do for his spinal health. Oh well. Arching his back after a day in pain had it's benefits, apparently, because Yugi noticed. 

There was a tickle right under his shoulder blades and the fine hairs on his arms stood. Yugi was watching him, he knew. Yugi was admiring him. 

 

_Definitely not._

Yugi would pluck the rest of the jewelry from his skin, he decided, licked his lips and turned.

The board was set.

“Why was this the first thing you bought?”

Yugi swallowed and tore his eyes away from Atem’s general vicinity and looked to the floor.

“I have to play a game.”

“Against whom?”

“Against Anubis.”

“Why?”

“Why not? Here. Let me show you where we are,” Yugi said and shook the gloss of yearning from his eyes. The then moved the pieces around and chattered away at each of his very few moves. “I chose the white side so I go first. I moved the pawn. Anubis went here. I did this. He accepted the pawn. It’s called ‘gambit accepted.’ I know it’s confusing, but I think you can figure it-”

“So that he doesn’t have- these things in the center. Move on,” Atem lowered his body into the nearest plush chair, watching Yugi’s delicate fingers pick and pinch smooth game pieces.  

“Right,” Yugi beamed. “I think you would be good at this game. So then this happened, see? And he moved his queen to attack my king. So I had to move the king,” he pointed to the white crowned piece that had offended Atem just that morning.

Yugi caught onto his displeasure immediately.

“Er, you, I mean, your majesty, I get that you thought this was some sort of voodoo magic with dolls and the black king was supposed to be you, and the white one was me and, er, I’m really not in your position so I can’t possibly understand what makes you think anything, and I-”

“Move on!” Atem snapped.

“Sorry! Just. Why would you think that..? I think it would be more fitting if you were the white king. And High Priest Seto can be the white bishop, since he’s so tall. I’ll move him…” he selected the tallest white piece with a pointed hat and moved it from its place next to the white king, “here.”

Yugi let the piece hover over the intended square in thought, swept the board with his eyes, nodded and dropped it. Then dropped his hands onto his lap.

“Well?”

“And that’s the game so far.”

Atem felt a headache creeping up. 

“This took two days?”

“Uh, yeah,” the priest grinned, embarrassed. “Chess is not my best game. Sorry, your majesty.”

“Right,” Atem stood from the chair with an air of indifference and made his way to the next room. He assumed Yugi would know to follow him.

He assumed wrong.

“Wait, your majesty, don’t you don’t want to learn how to play-”

“No, I do not. Come.”

Yugi’s expressive eyes blinked and his face fell. His smile turned sour, uncertain, and instead of the over-familiar side glances he kept throwing Atem’s way whenever he forgot to control himself, the priest now looked at him verily, as if Atem was a stranger.

Which he was. It would do Yugi well to remember that.

“Alright, your majesty,” he collected the board and carried it to the furthest table. “As you wish. You don’t like games, I get it.”

But Atem loved games.

 When he was a child, someone had the good sense to swap all of his nurses and attendants for riddlers and gamblers just so that he would exhaust himself to sleep instead of making demands on everyone he could catch to play senet with him.

He loved games.

The board Yugi set up looked sinfully attractive, and Atem’s mind was yearning for it, to touch it, to learn what it was, to play it and see it was fun.

The Puzzle, heavy on his chest, whined and complained when he walked away from it.

He wasn’t even sure why. He just did.

Yugi followed – what else could he do – and stopped in the middle of Atem’s bed chamber to look around with wide eyes, as if he had realized something and it unsettled him.

No matter.

Atem marched around him in a tidy circle, taking note of the drapery in his drab clothes and a distinct lack of jewelry.

The little thing would look good in gold, he decided, licked his lips and considered the loose saroual around Yugi’s legs where there was a normal wrap instead of pants just that morning.  Why pants, if not to play hard to get? Especially when Atem called for him at dusk.  _Just to annoy me,_ he decided.

What did clothes matter, when they would just drop to the floor and serve no purpose except maybe rags to clean their bodies once their act was done, and Atem had towels for that.

Skin. Clean and soft, Yugi smelled like fresh river water and probably tasted sweet.

“Um.”

“You are speaking to me again,” the pharaoh reminded and tried to sound stern. “I did not invite you to speak to me.”

“Er, okay but-”  _maybe he’s just very dumb_ , Atem thought, “I kind of think my coming here into, er, your majesty’s room was a mistake. Um.”

“Hm?” he stopped behind the priest, and Yugi had the sense not to turn around. He reached for him and put his hands on his shoulders, appraising him.

It wasn’t that the priest was ugly – with Atem’s face and hair and slight build, he was surprised there wasn’t a line of servants at Yugi’s door with gifts and bribes to get the priest to lay with them – but he was rude and strange and there was no doubt that at his best, Yugi would be half as good in bed as Atem’s worst royal whore.

So Atem had his reservations.

He could give this joke of a priest the honors of sharing his bed for the night, if for no reason other than wanting to make peace with him.

And he did want piece. The very part of him that ached to play that stupid game with Yugi wanted peace with him just as much.

“Um, yeah,” Yugi muttered when Atem ran a finger up the curve of his neck, “so your majesty definitely got the wrong idea.”

“And what’s that?” he muttered an inch away from tracing the line he drew with his lips.

The smaller body squirmed out of his grasp just when he was about to kiss Yugi’s neck.

“I won't have sex with you, er, your majesty. To be honest I don't even like you like that, no offence.”

He replayed it in his head again to make sure the words he heard matched their meaning.

“What.”

“Um, yeah.”

He grabbed the small priest by the shoulders and spun him around. Worried curves of Yugi’s face met him, and he almost flinched when his eyes caught that malevolent violet shade. It made him remember his rage.

"Whoever you belong to will think it a blessing to you both if I were to touch you, you do realize. Or are you daft?"

"I'm not a slave," Yugi eyed him crossly, "or a prostitute. And I don't think it's a blessing at all, so thanks but no thanks. Your majesty."

"Yes, my _majesty_. Do you even know what that means?"

"You're the pharaoh," his query squinted and tried to shrug off Atem's hands. "No, I get it. You're a god and you do what you want. But the thing is," he looked to his feet, "the thing is, you don't even want to do things like attack me or kiss me or do… things with me. You only do it because you think it's all a challenge."

A swift burst of barking laughter escaped Atem's throat before he thought to stop it. 

"A challenge?  _You_?" he said with an edge to his voice, one he didn't mean to sharpen into a shape of a threat. But the fingers he had buried in Yugi's sleeves dug into the skin underneath, and very suddenly Atem no longer had a query, instead, he had a prisoner his bed chamber. 

Yugi did not look like someone in any want of a blessing. 

He looked nervous and trapped. 

Atem squeezed his shoulders harder to prove a point, sighed, and pushed him away. The small priest looked glad for it. 

"But you belong to someone all the same," he noted idly. 

"I-"

"Parents?"

"I don't have parents."

"A master. No? A priest then, you had to have been under a priest at some point. Or a tutor."

Yugi said nothing. 

"Oh, scandalous, little priest," he teased. "An affair with a tutor, really?"

Some shuffling. 

"Not an affair? You're in love, then. A lover."

"No."

"Someone you'd like to be your lover."

"A friend," there was firm determination in his voice. "And I don't belong to my friend, your majesty. It's not even about him, it's about you being very  _mean_."

Atem clicked his tongue and smirked. 

"I know why you're here," he sang to some intangible tune, so satisfied he unravelled the mystery that he figured he earned himself a nice grape. 

"Really? Because Anubis has nothing-"

"Not Anubis," Atem waved at him and picked the best grape from the nearest of the multiple and bountiful grape platters around his rooms. "Who cares about Anbuis. _You_. You went making Ra knows what kind of shady deals with the god of death, and then landed yourself in my palace where I like to keep my execution blocks very red, all for a 'friend.' But I suppose I've heard of worse bets. What are you playing for? Come,” he coaxed Yugi with a grape, “sit. Tell me."

Yugi would not come. He minced his way between Atem’s furniture, pretended that Atem’s shiny things distracted him, even threw longing looks between the pharaoh and a senet board Atem always had set in his rooms.  

Atem shook his head and pointed to a daybed.

Yugi instantly developed an interest in window treatments and drapery.

 “I would make a threat to behead you but I know both will go over your head,” Atem told the priest tiredly. “What shall I even- no, come back here. I said here, not the door. Put that down. Here, catch,” he plucked a grape from a nearby platter and threw it. “What was that? You wouldn’t catch a fish if it washed right to your feet! Now come here.”

Well, he supposed he could always lead by example. He gestured to himself, then his favorite daybed, and sat in it as a demonstrative lesson of great importance.

Yugi looked thoroughly unschooled.  

Atem sighed, reclined, plucked another grape and put his feet up.

 “Has Anubis sent you to me to test my patience? I’m sure whatever you’re doing, you could as well do it elsewhere. Or was it to test my humility? Mercy?”

Yugi snorted at ‘mercy’, made a stung face, and said nothing.

“You can answer.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Are  _you_  testing my patience? You are. Fine,” Atem popped another grape and threw the priest a calculating look before huffing and squaring his shoulders.

“I told you to come here,” he ordered in a hollow voice, and his voice was never as kind with commands as it was with suggestions. He once brought a shadow monster to its knees with that voice. Small priests didn’t even rate.  

Yugi finally came. Trembling at his fingertips and uncertain in his steps, he dragged one foot in front of the other and came to a stop only when his loose saroual brushed against Atem’s wrap.

Atem licked his bottom lip and dragged a grape across it. The priest noticed, fidgeted, said, “um, I don’t-”, but Atem touched a spot beside him on the daybed with two fingers and didn’t break eye contact until he felt the cushions dip.

Pretty. And right next to him. He reached for the pale face, cradled it in both of his hands and let his fingertips enjoy the softness of the little priest’s skin.

“See? Not hard, is it?” he murmured as he traced a brow with the pad of his thumb.

What he told Seto wasn’t a lie. Sure, Atem considered himself to be exceptionally handsome, and, having stolen Atem’s face, Yugi was exactly that.

But he was pretty on his own merit, too. His eyes were gentle and his smile was kind.   

“Such light skin, though. Why? Doesn’t the sun burn you?”

“I try to stay in the shade,” Yugi muttered through Atem’s fingers and the king was tempted to dip a knuckle into his mouth just to feel the softness of it.

“See? Answering questions isn’t hard. Now tell me what Anubis promised you.”

“Um.”

This time, he picked two grapes and absently chewed on one and pressed the other one to Yugi’s mouth. Lips parted for it and teeth came out, and Atem pulled the grape away from its demise with a wet smack.

The pretty face scrunched in a mild discontent. Atem caught him by the chin with his fingers and teased the stolen grape across his lips again, this time watching the drops of juice and dew against the rosy color.

Yugi went for it with a snap and Atem had no choice but the feed the grape when teeth scraped by his fingers.

“Well, that was wildly inappropriate,” the priest supplied as he chewed. “And if you really want to know, which I don’t believe for a second, your majesty, I lost that friend. I’m just trying to find him again. And I will, if I win against Anubis.”

Atem patted his cheek, amused.

“And the God of death Himself granted you this bet? Why?”

“No,” Yugi bit the inside of his cheek and Atem wondered if he would taste bloody. “I’m paying for the privilege to play.” His voice turned quiet, thoughtful. Sad.

“A steep price, then. Leaving your home, coming here, is that your price?”

“Oh no,” the priest glanced at him and smiled a pitiful ghost of his usual beaming grins, “I wish it was. It’s something else. But I’m at peace with it.”

He was shy and timid, so alone among Atem’s cushions, even with a pharaoh paying him his undivided attention. Yugi had an air of hesitant friendliness about him, now that the space around him was quiet and unthreatening, now that Atem was calm and meant him no immediate harm.

His body language reminded Atem of Seto during the quiet hours well after midnight, when nightmares of Theif King and prophesies and curses would leave Atem too exhausted to sleep and too awake to appreciate the night. Atem would go on about one thing or other, and it would always frighten Seto, and he would present his fear as thoughtfulness and pretend Atem was still his friend.

Yugi looked it, too, except he was small and pretty, and stray locks of his golden fringe got caught in his lashes when he blinked, and he was bittersweet and tiny, and if Atem could not seduce him into his bed with his titles and riches, he would do it with comfort and promises of help.

Atem was a _god_.

So he said “I will solve your problems if you come to bed with me,” and Yugi burst out laughing. It had a pleasant ring to it, like the comfort of a wind chime on a stormy night, and Atem couldn’t be angry at him for it.

Yugi was still laughing when Atem felt a smile tug at the corners of his lips.  He bit it down and tried to sell it as indignant.

“I’m deciding if I want you or not. Try to act attractive, will you?”

“Oh,” Yugi swallowed and – he wouldn’t! he did – reached for the grape patter and stole one, still beaming, still giggling. “Well, in that case, you already don’t like me, your majesty. And I smell bad in the morning. And I’m, um, really terrible in bed, like, I would scream and cry and probably do my best to injure you. It’s a tragic affliction, I know, and it also makes me very unattractive and unwanted. Grape?”

He got his hand swatted for his efforts as Atem took his fruit back with an annoyed huff.

Then he went for the plain linen of Yugi’s tunic and was met with a shuffle further down the daybed and out of his reach.

“Get back here,” he demanded.

He wanted the priest's company, he decided. 

Not necessarily to touch him. Just his... company.

Yugi was such a gentle creature, so generous with his smiles. So trusting. If Atem hadn't thrown so many tantrums at his expense, he would have trusted a scorpion if Atem called it candy. 

He wouldn't mind making a friend of this priest, he realized. This one would be loyal. And he could definitely use one, since his own were running from him like rats from a fire. 

But-

But then-

It wasn't meant to be. 

The Puzzle whined, and the shadows the candles cast flickered and warped around the two of them. 

He didn’t mean to use the Puzzle, but the golden pyramid had a mind of its own these days.

His world froze the moment he touched Yugi’s soul, because what he felt there was a heartless void.

Shadows hissed at Atem, as they always did, but they curled their tendrils around Yugi’s feet and kissed his hands like hands of a welcome friend.

Atem reeled.

Traitor. Traitors, all of them. He screamed at this. Traitors High priests, Seto, Shada, everyone, this priest – this priest on his couch, traitor, traitor, slithered his way into Atem’s room, here to attack him, here to kill him. Traitor.

_ _

_Also definitely not._

The shadow magic of the puzzle would lock his traitorous heart away, and by all gods, Atem would do it, he would do it, _he tried to do it_ – but Yugi had no heart to lock away.

The shadows receded when Atem realized there was nothing he could do.

His rage did not.

Yugi, meanwhile, recoiled, hissed, jumped off the daybed and took the bigger portion of the cushions with him. They spilled to the floor and he nearly tripped over them as he backed away, stuttering over his words.

“Di- did you just-- did you use your-- how… could you…! Don’t you _ever_ —no!”

Atem stayed seated for a moment, trying to make sense of what he saw. That was definitely not a heart he felt, not an _ib_ in any real capacity.

Was it dark? It didn’t feel dark, but it was wrong. Was there a spirit monster eating the priest’s soul from the inside? It snuck under his skin, inside his palace, so close to Atem, how did they miss it… Shada.Shada checked his soul when he got here. “Shada knew. Guards!”

It felt like a storm in his private rooms, or perhaps a storm in his mind. Too many guards made too much noise storming in. The priest was loud in his graceless topple to the floor. Atem was on his feet at once, and then he was at the door and the Yugi had his forearm caught in his vicious grip, digging his heels in and refusing to be dragged.

“Shada. Seto. Now,” but the guards looked reluctant. “Where?!”

“High Priest Shada and High Priest Seto are attending the lesser tombs outside the city. They shall return in three days-”

“Well, who is here?”

“High priest Aknadin is-”

“Well, what use Aknadin to me? Fine. Throne room. You,” he stopped for no one and Yugi had to pick up his pace or risk having his arm dislocated. He didn’t look, but there was slippery wetness where his fingers dug into soft skin, and he knew it to be blood and sweat from where his rings and nails cut through. “Bring me my dia dhank. The gauntlet with gold wings, in the artifact armory. Run, or the next guard I send will bring me the dia dhank and your head. And you,” he yanked the priest ahead of him, “I am done with your games. Pray that Anubis accepts your soul, because I am just so done!”

Aknadin was waiting for him by his throne, with his head bowed low in his night clothes, sweaty and smelling faintly of hair fat.

Atem didn’t even bother climbing the steps to his damn chair.

“What is he thinking,” he demanded and shoved Yugi at the shifty High Priest.

“Your grace, I-” but Aknadin caught wind of his mood and it saved him his head. He unveiled his gross eye from beneath a curtain of gray hair and Yugi belched again, hissed and jolted as if the Eye had scalded him. “Outrage, my king. He is insulted his holiness used the Millennium Puzzle on him. And now he is furious my king had me use the Eye. He is… he is disgusted with you. It is the most treasonous-”

“I don’t care about treason. What of my curse?!” Atem demanded.

 “He…” Aknadin’s face wrinkled impossibly. “He is refusing to think of your curse.”

“Is he trying to block you? Ha! Curse, curse, cruse!” Atem screamed, not unlike a child throwing a tantrum, but what did he care if no one would survive to tell the tale? “curse and curse! Think about my curse, you little devil! Well?” he threw Aknadin an expectant look.

“He is thinking… of his own curse, my pharaoh.”

“Oh,” Atem’s teeth felt air when he grinned, delighted in the nasty way cats are delighted to see flightless  birds, “is he now?”

“He is cursed,” Aknadin confirmed and Yugi tossed in the strong grip of the guard holding him down. “He is thinking of… cards, your grace. Only cards. He is shuffling a… very elaborate deck of cards in his mind. I cannot get through. His consciousness is fading.”

_Fine._

“And his _ib_?”

“The Eye cannot see the heart, your grace. I-”Aknadin paused, swallowed, and carefully, with the tone of a bazaar haggler, pitched a thought. “Mahad and Seto can, surely, as well as Shada. Forgive me, but this seems to be a matter of great sensitivity to time…”

“And none of them are here!”

“Exactly, your grace,” Atem caught an eerie glimmer in Aknadin’s good eye and paid no mind to it. “I understand the reservations my king has about leaving the city against the advice of nearly,” he punctuated, “all of the council, however if his grace feels this matter urgent... whatever it is… perhaps he would consider…”

“Fine,” Atem didn’t even bother considering. “Ready the royal guard. _Now_. And jailers. And bring your dia dhank.”

Shada vouched for  _this_.

Disgusted, he shook Yugi, whose small body had shut down on him. He was limp and pliant, face blank and uncaring. Gone was his cheer and playful defiance, and instead he did as he was told numbly. If Atem had a heart, this would pinch it.

In a way, they were exactly alike.

In the early hours of midnight, under watchful stars and omens bidding his royal convoy a farewell, Atem the cursed pharaoh of Kemet left his city.


	5. Black Queen Retreats

 

1.

His heart did pinch in sour shame some hours after midnight.

The night was dead and cold, and the stars on Nut’s corpulent belly did little to illuminate the way of his convoy. 

Atem had risked no messengers to the temples, no torches, and he had wasted no time with litters and foot soldiers. An army of four hundred mounted guards accompanied him, and he figured that, and two masters of the shadows, would be enough to detain one traitor.

But the night in the desert was unkind and angry with his makeshift army.

The capes and blankets they brought did little to stop the bitter bite of the cold. Even Atem, wrapped in several layers of wool and inside the comfort of his favorite plum cape pulled his hands closer to his thighs.

His horse neighed, unsure if the ensuing tug on the lead was a command at all, and he absently patted her neck.

How could the horses stand the dark and the cold.

How could _anyone_ stand it.

But his Puzzle whined, and so did his heart and mind, three parts of his soul begrudging him for his cruelty.

He kept his mind off the small priest in the front of the caravan for as long as he could, busying himself with thoughts of vengeance and discomfort.

But Yugi’s jailer - a short man with broad shoulders and a heavy sword at his side - strayed into his view too often for Atem’s conscience to stay clean.

If Shada and Yugi conspired, the small priest would die.

If he was innocent, he would die for the defects in his soul, by Seto’s blasted hammer, and whatever tore his heart out would be sealed in a tablet, and that would be the end of that.

And it was _fair_.

If Atem never acknowledged his faults, he wasn’t ignorant of them. But, of all the things he’d done, this one was by far the fairest.

And yet guilt pinched his heart when the wayward jailer’s horse whined and the prisoner shrieked softly.

Yugi was afforded a straw blanket. He was shivering and small, a tiny thing against even a short guard.

Atem broke the formation.

“Give him here,” he said evenly, refusing to let his teeth chatter against the cold air. Their horses matched their steady pace and the guard hesitated, looking respectful but unsure.

“His hands are bound, what will he do? Run away into the desert? Stab me with his hair?”Atem unbundled his hands and made a grab for Yugi’s waist across the gap between their horses. This would be tricky, but the guard looked strong so they could manage. “Lift him. Watch his legs. And you. Cooperate, you’re not a doll. Move. I ordered you to move. Really? Fine. Toss him.”

The horses were not happy. They neighed and sneezed and both the guard and the king fell behind the caravan.

Eventually, the guard grabbed the small person under the armpits, lifted him with an admirable display of upper body strength, and Atem had to hold Yugi around the waist with both hands until he fell into his lap and his knees touched the backs of shivering thighs.

“There,” he muttered his irritation as they sped up to gain with the rest of the troops. Yugi was stiff, though Atem imagined his relief when the cold back of the priest’s robe leaned into his chest. He must have been freezing. And now, Atem was freezing with him since at some point he decided it was a good idea to plant a slab of cold marble into his lap. One that made his horse tired and him overburdened with sour guilt. What a great idea this was. 

With a grudge and a sigh, Atem adjusted his wrap and cape to encompass the size of Yugi’s unimpressive body.

Yugi was still and stiff, as unhappy to be in Atem's lap as Atem was to have him, but somehow more pliable in his discrete attempts to lean into the warmth.

“I will give you one more chance to confess,” the pharaoh said in a tone of a pharaoh, all pharaoh-like, completely unsure what confession he was even after. But at least he made it sound very severe and important. 

“Hm,” was the reply that came a full minute later. Yugi’s voice was soft and quiet, and it made the hollow silence of the night deafening to his ears. There was no cheerful wind chime in his voice, just sincerity. “I think I may hate you. Is that a crime?”

“Every time you looked at me with your foul eyes had been a crime, priest. This confession is hardly what I had in mind.”

“Then I have nothing to say.”

“Then you will die,” Atem said but the hand he had on Yugi’s hip gripped at clothes and skin. The priest squirmed. Atem supposed he’d done it to make him squirm, and not at all to hang onto him.

“I don't know what I expected,” Yugi said frankly. 

It was a strange thing, to speak down to a peasant and hear a prince snarl back at Atem between Yugi's peasant words. And what was he, really, if his hands had never known the labor of the fields and his body was unused and graceless? Not a commoner, not anyone's paramour, not a prince because Atem knew them all in more ways than one, not a godling or a diety. Not Atem's friend, not after two days and a betrayal.   

“You should expect to get executed, if you only came here to pass your curse onto me."

Yugi snorted softly, and all Atem could see of his endearing and humorless grin was a white mist in the near-freezing air of the desert. “No. I came here to get my friend back.”

Atem stole Yugi from the guard to make peace with him, for all it was worth. Instead, he found the ever-familiar rage slither under his skin and into his mind, poisoning his senses and making him want to be nasty.

It was Yugi’s soul driving him mad. It had to be.

Instead of making peace, he bit his lip and looked around. They were wrapped in blankets, and guards knew better than to look. And even if they did, what did care? Spitefully, he slipped his hand down Yugi’s thigh.

The priest said nothing, nothing as Atem patted the inside of his leg, nothing when he pinched his thigh hard, a soft sound when his hand found a fold under the tie of his rough linen belt and slipped inside until his fingers burned against hot belly skin.

“Get your hand out of my pants, your majesty,” the priest said evenly, and Atem savored the fear in his chattering teeth.

“Hn,” he dragged his nails down through a patch of coarse hair and steered left to the inside of a soft thigh just as he was about to reach genitals.

He drew a circle on the thigh, and the back of his hand brushed against the priest’s cock.

“Don’t touch me. I will scream.”

“And what? The guards will laugh at you. And then be envious because you’re about to have the king please you. At my own expense, too; I don’t expect you to ride my cock on a horse. Your _friend_ would forgive. Tell me his name.”

The priest fidgeted and said nothing. 

Atem dug his fingers into Yugi's thigh, hard.

"Yami, okay, it's Yami, now stop that!"

The skin of the soft inner thigh was smooth and hot beneath his fingertips and Atem found comfort in absently rubbing and pinching it and feeling the priest jerk around his lap. He will touch him, Atem decided, pressed his body close and put his mouth on the back of his neck.

"You can call me Yami for this, little one," he whispered into the shell of Yugi's ear. 

The priest froze up completely. Held his breath. Exhaled.

“Your majesty,” he tried, somber and even, and Atem couldn’t help but pay attention to his words instead of his skin, “I do not want you to touch me. I understand you can do as you like, but I’m asking you to please not. Please don’t touch me. I don’t want this.”

It made Atem pause and actually consider.

“Do you mean this?” he finally said in thought.

“Yes. Please.”

“Well, why not?” Atem heard his own voice, and it wasn’t dripping in spite as he hoped it would. It wasn't regal. It was princely, casual, and he sounded confused, even to himself. “Never mind the bad blood between us, I am about to please you, and it will likely be the last time someone pleases you, and I don’t see any reason you won’t like it.”

After a handful of seconds Yugi allowed himself because Atem wasn’t actively touching him any more, he made a careful sound of deliberation.

“So.. your majesty, um. Has anyone actually said ‘no’ to you before?”

“Why would anyone deny me?”

The priest fidgeted, obviously denying him, and the back of Atem’s hand bumped into his groin again. If he were to make a decision on the plea, it had to be now. 

But the Gods didn’t see it fit to give Atem a chance to redeem himself. 

The Gods were bastards.

Each and every single one of them, Anubis, Isis, Osiris, Set, the whole lot.

The only Gods Atem should have ever bothered worshipping were just two: 

First, Atem himself, obviously.

Second, the entirety of his council, blasted Shada included, and every man and woman with even a grain of common sense in them who _“very strongly advised”_ Atem to stay the hell inside the capital because of various and plentiful omens, as well as one or fifty ominous prophesies by a woman who could literally see the future, all _very peristenly suggesting_ he should not leave the city.

 _“We very strongly urge you not to leave the city, your highness,”_ they all even said to him.

Instead, he chose to drag his ass along with a quarter of an army into a freezing desert in the middle of the night.

So when Atem’s royal convoy got attacked, he really had it coming.

Good job.

 

2.

In retrospect, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now, stormed by an unknown number of bandits from behind a sizable dune and blind to everything without a torch in the dead of night, the ingenuity of Atem’s idea seemed very questionable.

A whistle.

Not very conspicuous.

A war cry.

Dull clang of metal against metal.

Screech of swords against swords.

Atem scanned everyone approaching his vicinity for red overcoats and white hair. 

The Thief will not have him. Not like this. 

“Shadow monsters!” cried several guards at once when a man-like creature that would have been a knight in another life pierced a solder with its steaming claymore only ten feet away from Atem. The monster made no pause for the horse or anyone else, dropped to the ground and dissolved into the darkness.

A hundred feet in a different direction, sand opened its massive maw and spat out a horse and its rider in shreds. The thing that did it moved so fast that it must have looked like an illusion to mortal eyes, except Atem wasn't mortal and he saw a horned red lion beast for what it was. 

They were going to be slaughtered.

“Aknadin! Where the hell-”

The one time Atem actually cared about Aknadin, the old man wasn’t around.

“Damn it!” Atem cursed and uncoiled his dominant hand from the horse’s lead. It bumped into Yugi, who scooted just far enough and shrunk into himself so much that Atem had forgotten he was even there. “Take the horse,” he shouted and dropped the leather lead into the priest’s small hands.

“Drop him, my king-” a guard was saying, but Atem had already broken through the tight formation around him and got Yugi to navigate the horse into the fringes of the battle where shadow knights gathered to feast.

He unraveled his dia dhank and the golden wings snapped into place around the disc.

The Puzzle hissed from the back of his mind in anticipation, and Atem felt a savory tug in the corner of his soul.

The monster knight from before landed ahead of them, with guts all over his ornate blue and gold armor and blood in his aged beard. The small priest he forgot was there squirmed against his chest.

No matter.

Atem grounded himself to the world of living, grounded the puzzle, leveled the mess of his thoughts with a mental crush and exhaled two quiet words. They hissed through his teeth as white mist in the black of the night, surged through his veins and poured into the gold disk on his arm, and suddenly the metal against his skin was fire.

 _“Vorse Raider,”_ he whispered, and the shadow creature came to his summons like a faithful servant from the pits of hell. He will fight fallen men with fallen men. Raider's massive body disappeared into the sand, surfaced by the bearded knight and drove an axe into his smoky shadow body. It would've been a spectacle if not for the lack of mercy or respect the shadows had for each other. 

“Look, priest,” he hissed nastily, presuming Yugi cowered into his chest and hid, “this is what lives inside your _soul_.”

But the priest wasn’t cowering. He did press into his chest, but apparently only for warmth. He watched the monsters with thoughtful comprehension, almost absently, as if they were his entertainment and he was a spectator to something quite ordinary.

“There’s nothing like that in my soul,” he muttered, “and pay attention, there are a dozen more of these things. Summon another, your left flank is getting destroyed by Gazelle.”

His Raider howled and took down the red lion, and a circular yellow metal creature next to it, for a good measure. What the hell kind of shadow monsters were these? Atem was used to centipedes and vipers with fingers for teeth, not _this_. 

“There are no real rules in this, are there,” Yugi muttered thoughtfully and Atem paid him no mind.

The guards would hold their own. The rare thug who hadn’t yet got a spear in his chest would die soon enough, and the carpet of bodies on the desert floor was mostly clad in dark bandit rags.

The guards would hold against men.

But the pockets of soldiers and their skillful swords and spears could do little against shadow creatures, and even though Atem broke no sweat in taking down three of them, there were ten more, one monster for forty guards, and he knew the ten guards would die to each of them.

The real problem was the limit of what he could do for them. He grit his teeth and stared at the dia dhank. Two seals stared back at him.

“Looks like you only got space for one more monster,” Yugi said in a tone that might actually be helpful, if Atem wasn’t bloody well aware of it. “Just summon ██.”

It was like metal against rock, nails over chalk slabs, white noise.

It caught him off guard.

“What?”

“I said just summon ██ and get this over wi- with… you can’t yet, can you…? If you could, you would’ve done it already and… well. I was not expecting that. Shit.”

The sound was _disorienting_ , like sound and color and earth all switched textures and Atem couldn’t focus on anything at all.

“I can’t understand what you’re trying to--aghh!”

“Hya!”

The horse, too, cried a worried ‘neigh’ as a shadow witch in armor, large, red, and yellow-haired spooked his horse and threw them both into the sand. Earth was sky for a moment, and then Atem’s world was blistering pain. Thin ringing in his ears was his vision, and then black with flickers of stars- or were they torches?...

His mount neighed again form some distance behind him. The witch - no, he realized, another knight with redundant red armour around her breasts spotted Atem and lost interest in horse meat.

She started for him with void eyes.

There was blood in his mouth.

 _“N-night Soldier!”_ he called and his voice broke into a higher octave, but this was a battle and no one paid his godliness and piety any mind anyway. He expected the burn in his arm, welcomed it like a friend rather than pain that it really was, and only when it didn’t come did he notice his arm bare and the dia dhank very absent.

He lost it in his fall.

Where…?

Not five feet away from him, Yugi was stumbling to his feet. He escaped serious injuries, Atem noted in passing, unlike him and his very broken leg.

In his small hands, Yugi had the dia dhank.

Their eyes locked, and there was no need for any words.

Yugi saw the red creature, approaching fast and ready to cut Atem in half with her sword.

Yugi saw his broken leg.

Yugi knew what he needed.

He deserved this, he figured, as odd calmness of defeat overtook his remaining senses. Sure, his heart sunk and his breath wouldn’t leave his lungs, but there was an odd sort of tranquillity knowing he very much deserved such a fitting end. 

Yugi wouldn’t toss him the dia dhank.

Why would he? Healthy and uninjured, he should run for his life as the monster busied itself with carving up Atem’s earthy body.

There was no need for words. Yugi held his gaze and the brief window of time he had to toss him the disk had closed.

Would he watch him die? Was that his real purpose? He seemed so gentle, so sweet. Would Yugi enjoy watching such a thing?

The priest broke eye contact.

A coward.

“—there are no rules, right?” he barely heard Yugi say just as the shadow woman came to hover over him. Talk, talk, talk, that’s all Yugi did. Such nuisance. 

“Then I don’t see why I can’t just-”

Atem closed his eyes and welcomed death.

“- _Beast King Barbaros!_ ”

Lightning pierced his eyelids before he realized what had happened.

_How?_

_From where?_

The thing tiny Yugi had somehow managed to summon was gigantic. Its black panther body was lithe and deadly, with a stinger for a tail and a golden mane of jewelry where the panther half fused into a beastly giant with golden hair.

It was the size of a small _house_.

And hell, did it roar like unholy thunder during a sandstorm.

Lightning struck sand and both men and beasts shrieked.

“ _Beast King_ ,” Yugi screamed at the creature as if what he summoned had any intention of being controlled by the likes of a tiny priest, “if your special ability is still to destroy everything the opponent controls, please do that! Take the three defeated monsters as tribute, since there are no real rules and I can’t see why not!”

The woman's sword, so close Atem’s head, froze in Beast King’s shadow and was dust in a blink of an eye. All of the shadow creatures were dust. None remained. 

Their demise was scenically disappointing and the adrenaline that surged though Atem’s body screamed at him for more spectacles; there had to be more to it, but there wasn’t.

That was the end of that.

When he dared to tear his eyes away from the impressive beast, he looked to Yugi where the small thing clutched at where the dia dhank burned his arm and panted. He looked so small in his clothes, but somehow gracefully proud and, yes, there it was, friendly. Always so friendly. 

“I can’t believe that actually worked,” he started to grin at Atem and all Atem could do was stare at him in quiet apprehension. He was _amazing_. It was a pity, he thought, that he chose to spend his time with this curious little thing harassing him.

He hoped Anubis would be kind to his soul.

Atem smiled back at him, from the dirt where he lay, injured but saved. He smiled kindly, because it was all he could give the priest for his journey to the afterlife. 

And he waited.

It didn’t take long.

The Beast King dissipated into dust when small knees bucked.

Yugi dropped like a mayfly into the sand.

“You little fool,” Atem muttered and wanted nothing but to pick up his small body and just hold it, not unlike when he grabbed his hip, not at all unlike how he spent his time stalking him just to be near him for some reason. “You don’t have a Sennan item. You just drained your life force clean.” And Yugi saved him with that. Atem didn't quite understand what that even meant, but he had a vague impression that some important events transpired and his mind would eventually make sense of them. 

The soldiers that came to help him to his feet ended up helping him over to where Yugi’s body lay.

Ra’s disk was just rising, starting the voyage of his boat across the sky from the pink cloudy shore on the horizon. It marked the start of the third day Yugi would have been with him, except not any more. 

Across the horizon, he could already see belated backup riding down the dunes. He got the guards to set him down and pulled Yugi's head to his lap.

He got a sleepy “nnh,” for his troubles.

He did not believe it.

By Ra’s grace, he did not believe it.

“Get me a damn high priest!”


	6. King's Knights

 

 1.

“Behold, Isis. His _Highness_  High Priest Akandin finally thought to grace me with his presence,” Atem hummed unkindly and brushed a stray lock out of Yugi’s face. “Your  _highness_ ,” he hissed and Aknadin whimpered, “to what do I owe this  _belated_  pleasure?”

He had an unconscious priest in his lap and hornets in his skull. Atem had worse days and longer nights, but memories of harsher times offered no comfort in the present.

 Aknadin seemed unaware.

“The caravan…” began his riveting tale, “six bandits…! The horse... with the … and… fought bravely, so bravely! Ten bandits… monsters! Big… the thing… and! I fought… at once… the… and… for I have defeated fifteen bandits! …and then I was knocked unconscious and unable to assist my pharaoh, please forgive me… grace… mighty… twenty nine and a half bandits.”

“By Gods!” Atem snapped, “go away, Aknadin, can’t you see I really don’t care?”

His unkind and very untrained nurse made noises of disapproval and swatted Atem on the knee.

“Ow! You will break it more, witch, what are you doing? Who gave you medical training? Why are you in my tent?”

“Ah. My king’s injury must be much graver than a scrape and a sprain it appears to my simple eyes,” Isis told him unkindly and applied more stingy salve to his grievous wound. “I shall recommend amputation immediately.”

“That’s not even the right leg!”

She swatted the correct leg this time.

“…tsk,” he conceded.

“I am not the boys, your grace,” she chided. “I will advise You, as is my duty, even at Your bullying.”

“That’s only because you have a fancy bit of jewelry there, and I bet you a new dress it predicts safety for your head.”

“My king shall gift me a new dress regardless, because the Necklace foretells it. Will my king hear other marvels the Necklace foretold? Shall I start with the messenger from Anubis? Imagine my  _delight_  when no one thought to inform me of his arrival.”

Atem made a face and combed his hand through Yugi’s hair.

“Or perhaps my promotion to the council, my king? This being my  _nineteenth_  royal duty to You, I am honored, truly.”

“Hn.”

“But I must beg my king to ask Ra for more hours in the day. Imagine, enough sunlight to perform all my duties, how wonderful would it be?” she said and wrapped a bandage around Atem’s leg entirely too tight.

“I imagine,” Atem rolled his eyes, “wielding a trinket that sees the future would help you arrive before the battle, not  _after_  it.”

“And perhaps it will please my king to imagine a warning against leaving the capital. What use is my trinket if my king knows better?”

“Careful, Isis,” he warned her and she paused, pursed her lips, and bowed a wordless apology. “It’s fine,” he waved, “it’s your nineteenth royal duty to counsel me, so by Gods, do it. What do I do about this?”

He jiggled his leg and effectively undid all his work of clearing Yugi’s face of stray hairs. 

She looked at them both, smiled, and started to take her leave.

“Be kind,” she counseled uselessly.

“Woman! You didn’t even do anything useful here. Tell me what to do! What does the damn jewelry say?”

“The Necklace is of no help-”

“Well then,  _you_  tell me! Shall I execute him?  The thing he summoned, and his soul, what was all that? Is there a shadow creature in him? He is a messenger of Anubis, so perhaps this is to be expected. Or is it? Is he here to curse me? Take my throne? And the face! Shall I be offended or humored? Do I take him to bed or a funeral pyre? Counsel me!”

He was sure the woman was laughing at him behind that bitchy ever-patient smile.

“And Seto would do that,” he gestured vaguely, “what you’re doing with your face. Not the smiling – Ra forbid his face will crack like a clay pot – but the laughing at your God-king, you two damn infidels, and now he won’t talk to me, took off to some damn temples and here I am, chasing him and his great wisdom so that someone with an ounce of brains would counsel me like they’re damn well supposed to!”

He heard a cry of heartbroken weeping then, in his mind and not for real, but an imaginary Aknadin wept tears of grief and Atem still could not summon a single fuck to give.

So he groaned, stretched, put his hands into the back of his head and scratched so furiously that his hair acquired a normal shape for a brief moment.  

“Just tell me what to do about anything. Anymore of this tiptoeing as if I’d set fire to the one whose breathing offends me, and I’ll set up a lottery for beheading the court, don’t think I won’t.”

Isis sighed, seemed to weigh herself on one foot and said, “the Necklace predicts that the course of action my king will choose to take will be favorable.”

“What the hell does th-”

“And-” she spoke over him, entirely by accident, and Atem’s shout yielded to her presumably better advice like he was starving for it. Isis, however, lost all her grace and something not unlike fright flashed across her delicate features. A blink later it was gone. She smoothed down an imaginary wrinkle in her dress at once. “Forgive me,” she said. “I did not mean to interrupt.”

“And-?”

“And,” she tried carefully, and Atem could see her brain working to string her politest words together, “the… anxiety over my king’s impending curse, er, caused him to, no, forgive me. Has brought out a different side of him. That, I think, is the reason for the rift between my king and the boys.”

“A different side,” he squinted at her and absently patted Yugi’s hair down. He’d forgotten he even had a lap-full of the small priest in the room with them. Yugi, thankfully, was still comatose, so that was at least good news.  

“A temper,” she said and came only a little short of running from the medical tent.

“What temper,” Atem said after her dust and decided to allow little Yugi his life, at least until he made it to the temples and gave Shada a chance to explain himself, because he rather liked petting his ridiculous hair.

 

2.

“Don’t,” he told Seto some pointed silence later, “I already had the pleasure of being lectured about leaving the city by Isis.”

Seto continued to say nothing and eyed Atem’s bandaged leg.

“We got ambushed by the Thief’s bandits. Just… don’t.”

He had one of his generic guards carry little Yugi into the outermost chamber of a temple and dump his limp body onto a welcoming altar where they laid him out like a dead man about to have his last rites.

Seto looked between the injured royal guards, Atem’s leg, and a mostly dead priest on the altar.

“My king… the priests and I were gone not even a day.”

Well then.

Fair enough.

The minor details of his slightly disproportionate overreaction still gnawed at the back of Atem’s mind when Shada finally showed up, all humble and timid, and Atem at once knew he was innocent.

“Well,” he huffed, “if you didn’t betray me, then you were inexcusably sloppy.”

Shada appeared to have absolutely no clue what Atem meant, why his pharaoh had come out to see him all the way out here, or why there was a mostly dead priest on the altar.

But the thought of filling him in seemed tedious and Atem decided it was best to continue pretending his priests were informed.

 “Rather hard to miss a heart missing from a soul!”

“Whose soul-” Shada began to ask, but Seto caught his eye, shot him a meaningful glare and nodded to Yugi's body. “Ah. No, my king, his heart was there just two days ago. A little worn, perhaps, but-”

“Well, it’s not there anymore, is it?”

The two high priests exchanged looks, and Shada approached the altar.

“If I may?”

Shada’s dull eyes grew wide the moment the Key touched Yugi’s skin, and Yugi scrunched his face and groaned softly.

Seto jumped between Atem and him at once, with his silly axe out like it was any kind of real weapon, but Yugi was still mostly dead and very unconscious.

“The millennium items don’t seem to agree with him,” Atem noted, ducked under Seto and planted himself on the corner of the altar next to Yugi. “Well?”

“His heart has deteriorated,” Shada confirmed, disturbed and vary. “His heart is leaking, but it is leaking only a small part of him. His essence, as well. He is losing a very specific memory, I think. Of visiting a place, or perhaps knowing a person. ”

“Memory? Can it be a shadow monster festering in soul and stealing from him? I tried to seal him with the Puzzle but the shadows  _loved_  him.”

Seto checked.

Seto shook his head. 

Seto was sincerely unhelpful. 

“Then what use are you both!  Wake him. He is answering my questions.”

After some inconsequential fuss about how hard it was to summon someone from the brink of death for questioning (the word ‘impossible’ was floated one too many times) Atem grit his teeth at them.

He hissed "he mentioned knowing some Yami. Go back to the city and find me a blasted Yami!" at one guard and glared another guard away from  _his_  stupid half-dead Yugi.

Atem could carry his own stupid half-dead Yugis, thanks.

So he shoved his hands under Yugi’s back and knees, lifted him off the altar roughly and stomped the hell out of the tablet temple.

Yugi was heavy. 

His back was bony and his knees were nubby. His hair tickled Atem under his chin.

He carried him well off the temple grounds and out into the desert, to where the cliffs had just began to erode underneath the sand, to a stream and shade and seclusion.

The guards had long left his side to blend in with the scenery and patrol the perimeter, but Atem looked around anyway, half-expecting to see the angry eyes of the Thief trained on him just beyond some dune.

He was well within the Thief’s territory, after all, temples or not.

But there was no Thief, just Atem and his wild-haired baggage.

He picked a good spot in the shade of a large boulder and dropped Yugi into the sand, planted himself near him and dragged him half-way onto his lap.

“I hate you,” he said to no one, leaned in, and kissed his face.

Yugi’s skin was dry and cracking, and there was sand between his lips. A single night in the desert had been unkind to him.

“That’s  _my_  price, you little idiot,” he brushed a stray lock from where it rested on Yugi’s nose. He took one small hand into his, let it drop limply onto the Puzzle, and waited for magic to either work miracles or do nothing.

It was hard to tell time in the dead silence of the desert.

It was yellow and tedious and fairly consistent everywhere.

Atem’s eyelids grew heavy.

There were two birds in the sky. Two falcons, with rich feathers of ridiculous colors.

Two white snakes in the desert.

A black dog with purple eyes watched both sets.

“Mnn,” there was some commotion across his legs. Atem ignored it. “Hnhuh? Wha- hey. Hey pharaoh, wake up. Hey.”

Atem groaned and swatted at pesky hands and fingers in the folds of his robe.

Tug, tug.

“What?” he snapped, and his dried vision focused on the pale disaster with wild hair and misleadingly dangerous eyes hovering just inches away from his face. “Oh, it’s you.” And so conveniently positioned, too.

Atem grabbed him by his hair and pressed his mouth to his lips again for a ridiculous juvenile smooch.

Just like the kiss before, and the short nap Atem absolutely did not take in Yugi's company, it meant nothing. It meant to mean nothing; it was petty, quick, and terribly underwhelming as far as kissing went, and Atem only did it because he would otherwise be counting rings and guards and birds and snakes and each and every grain of sand, and still he would only perceive his world through his eyes and not his heart. And that world tasted like a mouthful of sand, and Yugi had sand all over his pretty mouth and tasted nothing like it.

And if any thoughts _had_ crossed Atem's mind between yanking Yug's limp little body from the temple altar and bringing him out here so he could pass away with honor, any thought at all about the inevitable possibility of the Puzzle being but another useless trinket that could not save his stupid purple-eyed ward that he did not ask to get from Anubis in the first place, then Atem's eyes would grow wet before the salt dried them out, and his throat would go sore from screaming. But Yugi was awake now and none of that mattered because none of it happened because the guards that were not there did not gossip about their king. 

“Mnn!?” Yugi, meanwhile, shoved him away, scandalized. 

Which was for the best, Atem supposed, since he was prepared for nothing short of a bloody lip.

“ _My_  price. For dragging yo-” Atem yawned, and prodded the back of his neck to get a kink out of it. Served him right, sleeping against a rock. Yugi jerked in his grip a bit, but Atem had him by the hair so there wasn’t anywhere he could go except into Atem’s lap, which he avoided like a pot of boiling oil.“-you back to life. If you can pay Anubis with a memory, you can spare me a kiss.”

Yugi froze, squinted at him – or maybe found the white glare of the desert too bright for his liking. He deflated a little. Pursed his lips. Preened.

“Do not,” he finally said, his eyes severe and irritated, “ _ever_  do that again.”

Atem set his jaw. “Or what? Careful, priest.”

In the end, Yugi folded his own bluff.

“You are a bad person,” was all he said.

“Hn.”

He seemed to realize how alone they were very suddenly, and it unsettled him. His legs inched closer together and his fists curled.

 He stilled at once, cute in his undersized fury, and looked around. But he was a tired and curious little creature underneath the rage that was probably very new feeling for him. He still knelt by Atem’s side because Atem wouldn’t let go of his hair, still braced himself on Atem’s chest with his dainty little hands. “Where’s your army?”

“Where’s your army,  _your majesty_.”

“Oh. Right, sorry,  _your majesty_ , where’s everyone,  _your majesty_? What happened to the guards? Your majesty?”

Atem sized him up, sighed wretchedly and forged remorse. 

“They are all dead,” he said with a grave voice.

Yugi stopped breathing, suddenly more alert than Atem had ever seen him. He clutched at Atem’s robe and pleaded with his eyes. Anger was not a thing Yugi could hold for long, Atem realized. Neither could he, when he was nearly bursting with laughter.

“What!?”

“What,  _your majesty_."

“Tell me! They were just- just there, I- is it because of me, I’m sorry, I-”

“You’re sorry,  _your majesty_.”

“Stop that! Are you- is- no. No! You’re  _lying_!”

“Ha!”

“Not,” Yugi smacked his arm, red-faced with renewed fury and at the brink of tears, “funny!”

Atem chuckled at his ferocious glare, patted him on the head, and said, “if it wasn’t funny, I would have you flogged for assault. And we kissed, priest, don’t forget.” he smirked. “What would your Yami say?”

Yugi was offended for some time after that, even as Atem gave him a waterskin as a peace offering. The priest drained in a minute, said nothing, and followed Atem back to the temples.

It was a poor procession. The guards that gathered to flank him were still worn from the night before, too few high priests received him, and his companion was dressed in rags.

Atem was hungry, thirsty, tired, and a full laundry list of other minor annoyances. But when Mahad and Seto came out to welcome him back with all the applicable formalities, they took one look at Atem and his entourage, and nodded him inside with very little bowing.

Atem was grateful for it.

“Let’s just deal with the temple and go home,” he muttered. “Or is there nothing wrong with it, and the three of you only wanted an excuse to leave me to my own poor decisions?”

“You can’t blame them if they just wanted to get away from you for a while, your majesty,” Yugi piped up from behind the three of them, and Seto flinched and walked a little faster.

Atem threw the little creature a dirty look.

“Oh, shut up. Are you trying to get executed? Why are you even here?”  

“Well, I kind of followed you like that’s what I’m supposed to do, and everyone just sort of let me come in?” But he caught Atem’s glare, blinked, his rosy lips made an apprehensive ‘o’ and by the time he finally added the appropriate “your majesty,” a tight moment of silence passed.

 “Shall I throw him out, if it pleases your grac-”

“Seto. Don't.”

They shared a look that was worth a dozen empty conversations. The silence was comforting in a vacant sort of way, because no pointed looks could get Atem to say things he was too proud to say in private without an audience, and definitely not when there was a stranger between the four of them.

But Seto understood what he needed. As did Mahad, somehow, without ever looking his way.

Seto was the first to pretend, all prim and proper, that they were having a silent conversation about Yugi all along.

“Then at least arm your dia dhank, your grace.”

Why not. Atem undid the clasps and the disk snapped into its true shape. Yugi only made a face and shrugged, and they had almost finished descending the narrow and slippery staircase by then, so what did it matter? At least the air down there was cool and damp, unlike the dry furnace of the hells that some called the desert and thought it was a good place to live. The bowels of the temple smelled of mold and dead things, but even that was a welcome change from taking catnaps in the sand.

“The Thief and his riders damaged the lower row of tablets. Forgive your servant if the damage is insufficient cause to leave my pharaoh’s side,” Mahad supplied meekly, but Atem could already see dents in the stones and the ghosts that lurked in the cracks.

Shada stood in the center of the shattered tablet gallery with his back to them, still, as if frozen and soulless, and Atem supposed that he was, in a way.

At least they washed away the gore and cleared the pit of dead bodies the thieves had left behind. Spirits were never kind to those unworthy to command them, even if they were just misinformed bandits on orders they didn’t know to be suicide.

“If he was trying to trigger the prophesy by getting me out of the city to fix this, it was a lousy plan.”

Seto averted his eyes. Mahad said nothing in a manner that meant he agreed with everything Atem said or will ever say. Yugi snorted, the only one in a while to take Atem’s words lightly.

Oh, right. 

 _That one_ was still around

“Are you of any use here?”

Confused, Yugi looked between him and a saber-toothed apparition trying to tear itself from stone. He didn’t seem frightened by it, only slightly nervous.

“I don’t know, your majesty. What can I do?”

Seto threw him a look that said,  _‘if you make him have shadow duels, his soul will drain again and he will die.’_

Atem glared back with a  _‘he survived the last one fine, didn’t he?’_

And Seto helpfully supplied,  _‘no, he definitely almost died’_

Atem figured,  _‘well, I pulled the Puzzle on him and he didn’t even care, so he might be of some use.’_

How the hell were they even having this conversation?

Atem realized with distain he was just arguing with himself while staring at Seto.

How royal of him.

“I don’t suppose you can just ask them to go back to their tablets?”

“Er, no, your majesty.”

“Well at least pray one back inside, will you? You summoned a shadow creature, you must know how tablet temples work.”

Yugi very much did not know how tablet temples worked. He only knew how to smile just right for Atem to take pity on him.

“He is an exercise in patience,” Atem said to no one in particular. “If I am to learn some lesson here, so be it.”

“Huh,” Yugi muttered and shied away from Atem’s hands. He threw the priests in the room pleading looks, but they didn’t much care for his absolutely torturous plight of getting the country’s finest silk cape wrapped around his shoulders by a god, so he bit his lips shyly and stared at his feet as if Atem was taking away his clothes and not putting more on him.

“There. I am being _kind,_ you little... you. Be grateful. Now. You two, go rest. I’ll send Shada up as soon as he’s done, and do what I can here.”

“The little priest?” Mahad dared.

“He stays. Hm, now that you two are here…” Atem trailed off in thought. “Yes. You two are my council. Counsel me. I’m thinking of giving him a dia dhank and throwing an Item at him – the Ring will do, and he will help seal- Ah. Your faces. No, really, your faces! Look at each other. You’d laugh too, if you two weren’t the dullest men in my kingdom. Fine, fine. Talk me out of it.”

 

3.

“If you think that I think that you trust me now-” Yugi began after Shada woke up from his trance and scurried up the staircase to leave them to their own devices, not because he looked particularly tired, but because he had probably heard of the insane fallout Atem’s proximity to the little pri... no, to _Yugi_ had caused over the last few days.

“I don’t. Trust or think. I don’t think much, when Aknadin is around. Neither should you.”

Yugi blinked and bit down a shy grin, but his efforts were of no use and he was practically beaming when he said, “cards! Cards and cards.”

“Hm,” Atem acknowledged, lest an opportunity to make peace go to waste, even if he was busy looking for cracks in the walls with his fingertips. “You do know what you cost me, don’t you?” he said absently when no ghost claws would dare touch his hand.

“Not really, your majesty.”

“My curse. What do you know of it?”

“Nothing, other than that the great pharaoh of Kemet,” Yugi punctuated his words, and he wasn’t being spiteful, Atem could tell, just petty, “is cursed by Bakura.”

Atem paused and turned to look at him.

“Not many know that name. Not many know any of his names.”

“He has other names?”

“He rejected his slave name when he proclaimed himself Thief King Bakura. I suppose I understand why.”

There was a soft rustle of familiar silk behind him, and it was inching closer. Still far from his reach, but closer.

“So what did I do?”

“You probably triggered my curse, for all I know. I should have never left the city. But, I suppose, once a snake bites, there is no milking the venom back into it.”

“Not really,” Yugi told him simply. “You did all that on your own, your majesty.”

“Yes, priest, because of  _you_.”

“No. Not at all.”

Rage would do him no good here. There were things far more toxic than his mind lurking within this temple, and Atem supposed there was no use arguing with something he knew to be half-true. Still, no shadow creatures would challenge him, not with their claws or even with hateful looks.

This one  _was_  because of Yugi, he realized. Yugi made them timid. He could shove a dozen of them back into the tablets and they would not fight it.

But Atem wanted a fight. He wanted blood on his knuckles and claws in his soul, he wanted to put defiant things back to their place and make the world right again.

“Don’t you have a game with a giant dog to play?” he muttered sourly.

Yugi thought about it.

“Not really,” he said, as if he was weighing his words. “I mean, I still have to play the game, but I realized something last night, about the monsters in the desert.”

“Oh?” Atem didn’t particularly care. “And what’s that?”

“That Anubis is screwing with me. Your majesty. I was actually really afraid he might, but it changes things now that I know for sure he’s doing it.”

“Ha.” It was an absent laughter.

“What?”

“You aren’t afraid of Horus or Anubis, but you are afraid of being cheated. What a strange thing you are.”

“Aren’t you afraid of petty things, your majesty? Like thieves, like losing, like dreams where you’re in a room and you can't get out?”

“And snakes,” Atem said, “and forgetting myself, and being forgotten.”

Well, all right then. 

“I'm sorry if I ever forget you,” Yugi told him. There was a hint of subdued grace in his manner. 

What an odd thing to say. 


	7. Enemies, Pt. 1

  

1.

It wasn't until Atem had lead his army out of the temples that the dread of his greatest miscalculation had dawned on him. 

It wasn't death that he saw in Yugi's strange purple eyes. 

It was the sickening and vicious cheer of a  _morning person._

“You exhaust me,” Atem muttered into Yugi’s shoulder after hours of indignant banter he could’ve done well without.

“Then maybe your majesty could get me a horse to ride? Or you could have me ride with a guard.”

“I could have you walk the entire way, would you like that?”

“But I could mhhhhfm. Mmh. Mmrlly.”

“Really, _your majesty_.”

“Morry. Mmrlly, mor majrherhy.”

There was a bathing shore in their way, and it would satisfy some of Yugi’s numerous complaints. It would probably get him to shut up, too, but by the time Atem even thought to make the stop and let his army get their well-earned refreshment Yugi had spent a good hour irritating him. And Atem was a creature of spiteful habits, and so he, his army, and Yugi were all serious danger of having to make the trip with only Atem's ego to fuel them all.  

But his robes were getting a little greasy and the day grew too hot to spend with a squirming morning person in his lap. And hell, if Yugi would sit still or quiet for even a moment.

He just would not move his hips with the horse.

He kept stiff against Atem, and his body would slide down the saddle or bump into Atem every time their ride jerked or stepped on a rock, and for a while Atem thought maybe the saddle caught a thorn or a dozen and they were irritating him. But when he thought to casually drop a hand onto Yugi’s thigh, he found his companion achy all over from clinging to the saddle.

Atem’s lips were still sore from when he chewed them and seriously contemplated holding Yugi down from behind, by the hips and thighs, and grinding him along the saddle in rhythm with the animal’s steady march, if just to teach him to ride. But his small fantasy stopped being about riding the very moment it began, and he had to cut it short before Atem’s body presented Yugi with an altogether different reason to squirm.

“Move your body,” Atem muttered and held back telling him to ride it like he would ride a man. “And relax,” he patted his stiff thigh, "a horse is not a camel; it won't throw you."

“Wouldn't know. I never rode a camel either, your majesty,” Yugi told him a little absently, apparently too busy fidgeting. “Could you please move back a bit? I’m really starting to get sore. Are we going to stop any time soon? Maybe if I got my own horse-”

Atem would not trust him to ride a cock unsupervised, never mind an animal.

“Okay, maybe your majesty could deign to teach me, like, I honestly don’t know what I’m doing wrong here.”

In the end, Atem wrapped a firm arm around his waist and pulled him flush against himself, never mind the sticky discomfort of what heat in the desert did to bodies.

Protests and outrage and an unholy amount of fidgety complaints fell on his deaf ears, and it took ten good minutes for Yugi to finally settle down and realize he was comfortable and secure. He relaxed at once, if only marginally, and Atem could tell firm support was exactly what he needed. 

“Hold onto my arm.”

He gripped at it gladly.

“Better, see.”

It was.

“You are taking riding lessons once we return to the palace. You are absolutely ridiculous.”

But it only got worse.

Oh Ra, the _questions_  of a morning person in want of a horse were nearly as unbearable as his inability to ride one. 

_We are returning to the capital._

_Yes, Yugi. Weset is indeed south._

_Yes, we are going north, not south._

_Because there are bandits there._

_Not here is a satisfactory place for Aknadin to be._

_We are not crossing the river._

_You cannot have a horse._

_The priests have yet to finish attending the temples._

_The army cannot go return north, have you gone deaf?_

_Gesa is south, ‘that’s what’s south.’_

_‘Can you have a horse,’ please, and your majesty._

_You cannot have a horse._

_Three towns before Weset._

_So that we can go around the desert._

_Because there are bandits there!_

_No horse!_

_No, Gesa, not Giza. What the shadow realm is Giza?_

Still muted by Atem's holy hand for his insolence, Yugi murmured something against his palm and leaned his back further into him in what Atem understood as resignation. Good. His arm was cramping up and he had to pet _his_ horse. Because it was a fine horse indeed. A fine horse very much unlike a horse Yugi could absolutely _not_ have.

He helped Yugi adjust his makeshift hood.

“It would do you good to get some color in you,” he said absently. His companion was sweating, even in Atem’s silk cape.

“I really don’t want to get stuck with sunburn in the middle of a desert.”

Atem could get him an ointment - he was sure someone had brought some - but the river was already branching into shallow streams where birds feasted on dried tadpoles, and he knew the bathing spot was not far.

When they reached it, it was vacant of all stone masons that usually bathed there. 

Atem knew why.

Atem chose not to dwell on it.

Yugi picked the excitement out of the air like blood in the water. He stole glances at the guards at their left, their right, around them, and though there were seldom any words spoken between any of them, Yugi seemed to realize something was about to happen.

What a social creature.

He put his weight onto Atem’s arm and turned half way to peer into his face.

“Are we about to stop?”

“We are.”

He beamed.

It was a contagious smile, and Atem felt his own lips curl in mild delight.

He eradicated all traces of it promptly.

“I’ve decided I enjoy you,” he declared with a regal tilt of his chin, and Yugi’s smile grew soft and meek around its edges. “What?” he demanded, “speak, there’s clearly something on your mind other than the horses you will never have, at last, thank Ra and all the Gods below him, now tell me.”

“I- um, sorry, your majesty,” he muttered through his grinning lips and finally – _finally -_ averted his eyes in shame and apprehension, as he ought to have done back in the capital, and each time thereafter when he would pierce Atem with his friendly stares and Atem would weigh the benefits of having him executed for such petty treason. But Atem wasn’t sure he enjoyed himself now that such simple things had begun to dawn on Yugi’s simple mind.

But Yugi was never simple, was he? He was never dumb, or ignorant, or reckless, not at all.

“Go on.”

“I just… I feel pretty stupid. Not just from a survivalist perspective, you know, which is a whole can of worms I’d rather not get into because you can be very mean, like how are you even tolerating me at this point, but just the- the- I don’t even know. I feel dumb. I’m sorry, your majesty,  _my noble king, most gracious pharaoh, I beg your grace to consider this worthless servant’s apology, for trespassing upon affairs which had no business befalling the unworthy ears of your simple sorcerer, you are no longer a prince, my  holiest of gods, please forgive this Mahad...” One._

_Seto prostrated before Atem’s throne and Atem’s guards and Atem’s mercy. He weathered the storm with his forehead pressed to the floor and a quiet prayer on his lips, as sycophants screamed praise and heads dropped in humble respect before their bodies could follow them to the ground, and when Seto was permitted to rise there was blood on his forehead and cheek, in his hair and across his eyes, and it was not his blood and he would not look around the throne room before he fled at his dismissal. Two._

_“Don’t you want to be a powerful sorceress? I can’t lend you Mahad, so you will have to settle for second best, and across the country. Now go, before you too are in need of petitioning for my forgiveness. Go, Mana, leave. I order you to leave.” Three._

“-and I don’t know why I was doing it, you know, being disrespectful, though I wasn't trying to be disrespectful or anything. I just had this gut feeling it was something that you needed? To, like, look at you and talk to you. I don’t know why. It was dumb, and I apologize. Your majesty? You’re looking at me funny. Am I talking too much?”

Atem watched Yugi pant a little, breathless from his chronic inability to ever shut up. He thought of holes in Yugi’s robe. Out of habit, he wondered if he could count them in any sort of way that would still seem regal.

It was moments later that Atem realized there was no need to count anything. There was no storm anywhere. He was calm. He was calm and his thoughts were lazier than the summer heat of the desert.

 Yugi was a solid weight against his chest, and Atem patted him on the head as a reward for his existence.

“I enjoy you,” he found himself saying again, and then, “we’ve arrived.”

 

 

 2.

No one thought to bring the blasted game.

The board still sat on Atem’s lunch table just as Yugi had left it, and it still called to Atem sweetly across the unfortunate distance between him and a shiny new toy.

But it was not here. He was not tracing his hands along the seams of the board and there were no insulting military pieces beneath his fingertips. He voiced his displeasure when a game was not among the possessions a jailer returned to Yugi, and both apologized for their thoughtlessness, though later in private Yugi tacked on a tirade about how sorry he was about (being very inconsiderate and) not thinking to bring the game with him whilst being placed under (violent) arrest (against his will) (which is what being placed under arrest meant) (but at least Yugi was sorry about not bringing the game). (The extent of Yugi's remorse was dubious.) 

Pharaoh Atem was a benevolent pharaoh, so he forgave Yugi’s mortal transgressions.

But his personal guards were cleverer than the jailers. They knew his moods well. They, the clever and useful men that they were, thought to bring senet and mehen and a few easier games. One had a book of riddles and  to read, and another brought a rolled hide of Hounds and Jackals, and it all appeased Atem only marginally until Yugi promised to teach his game with drawings once they reached a town.

“Senet?” Atem suggested and feigned indifference when Yugi explained that they had senet where he came from but no one knew the real rules.

“Maybe you’d like to teach me, your majesty?”

Atem told him he would, but he honestly admitted he would do it only to entertain himself as Yugi could not possibly prove to be much of an opponent if he didn’t know how to play already.

“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Yugi winked, and Atem did not believe him because he didn’t want to set himself up for disappointment. “And you know what?” Yugi added as they picked their way through the pebbles of the beach. “I think fresh air is good for your blood pressure, your majesty. You’re nicer, even if you still won’t stop touching me.”

Atem made a point to pinch him before removing his hand from his waist.

Nicer, was he?

He wondered if Yugi’s presence was a gift of kindness rather than an insult, a cheerful and pleasant company to help Atem though the grief of his looming defeat.

Yes, _that_. The little matter of the vaguely triggered curse. 

And oh, did it loom over him, so sweetly lurking in the shadow of a red man with a scarred face and white hair. Oh, and he was ready to pay the blood debt now, eager, almost, just to get it over with and die – or get cursed – or _something_ , and be at peace with it.

“A shame Anubis didn’t give you to me sooner,” Atem muttered, still brooding.

“Huh? Oh,” Yugi blinked at him, “no. Anubis didn’t _give_ me to you. I came here. On my own. I’m not yours.”

“Everything is mine.”

“Well,” Yugi protested, and his face had gone decisively void of all smiles, “not me. I’m not a thing, and I’m definitely not yours.”  

Atem felt his brows grow heavy with discontent.

“Especially you,” he threw over his shoulder and expected Yugi to keep following him, except of course his small companion stopped dead in his tracks. “Ah, your Yami,” Atem remembered. “He must not be very important to keep slipping from my mind.”

Yugi measured him then, from the very tips of his hair to his slippered toes, the rude little bastard, except he averted his eyes and bowed in respect as soon as his survey was complete. Whatever he was looking for in Atem's face, he did not find it. 

“Your majesty,” Yugi began, and his hands were very still. “We were finally kind of getting along, and I don’t want to stay long enough for you to ruin that. So please leave me alone for a while, I’d like to swim over there, alone. Thank you.”

Many stray thoughts went through Atem’s head then. They were mostly _‘aren’t you going to ask for a horse to swim with you?’_ and _'you will stay with me until dismissed,'_ and finally, _‘damn it.’_

It would be unfair to say Atem didn’t try to leave him alone.

It was a valiant attempt, one worthy of its own panel in his tomb.

He lasted ten whole minutes it took a well-built military servant to fetch him a fresh set of clothes and another five to make sure no guard would splash his junk in the river anywhere near Yugi’s vicinity. But it was busywork. No one even thought to dare go near a pretty thing that spent its time in the pharaoh’s lap, and Atem knew this, but he had to appear busy so he picked through his fresh clothes and pretended to take interest in making sure his horse was an object of envy.  

He dismissed everyone and made his way to the shallow pool Yugi had gone off too once he was bored to tears.

Leaving Yugi alone was very hard work indeed.

And seeing him again was a delight.

He was treated to a relaxed and unassuming ivory back of a small man. Clean lines and sharp angles framed Yugi’s body down to his skinny waist where the angles filled out into full cheeks and supple thighs until the water hugged them around their curves.

Atem licked his lips and hoarded the memory of it.

“Hello,” he cleared his throat, knowing well getting caught leering would damage their relations. In theory, coming here would do the same, not if Atem could help it.  

Yugi, meanwhile, heard him, yelped, turned, realized he really shouldn’t be turning, and threw his very pleasing body into the water until his nose was only slightly above it, and _glared_.

Atem felt his brows lift in good humor.

“I will have you know your water is transparent.”

Beneath the water, Yugi hugged his knees.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, took note of his bathing companion’s mood and reached for the first lock on his collar casually. He hoped he was emanating complete and total trustworthiness, but it was difficult to say if Yugi was buying it. “I meant I won’t touch you. It’s bad manners in a bath, and I’ve had too difficult of a road to pursue you unless you choose to come to me.”

Off came his heavy gold collar. It clanked against its own metalwork when he discarded it on a yellow rock. Bracelets and bangles followed it, at least those he cared enough to remove, and Yugi would not take his eyes off him.

“I came here to ‘get along.’ Or are you shy of your body?” Atem wanted to reassure him it was beautiful but then thought better of it. “I am here for your company, I promise. Nothing more.”

When Yugi finally spoke, Atem was already working the knots in the back straps of his robe.

“You set this up, didn’t you? It’s the best spot, and no one else came here except me,” he said, suspicious of Atem all the way down to his tiny core, and Atem figured his trustworthy farce wasn’t doing it. so he dropped it in favor of his reserved throne room expression.

Yugi caught onto him with impressive swiftness.

“I knew it,” he muttered and curled into himself shyly.

Atem was kind. “I promised," he said, "don’t forget.”

The knot finally gave into his fingers and he let the straps drop down his back. Soft linen of his sleeves came loose and slid down the curves of his bare shoulders until its fibers caught along the edge of an armband.

He took note of the flatter of Yugi’s lashes from the corner of his eye. This time, Yugi was watching him. This time, Yugi was admiring him. 

 “Look away,” he told him gently, careful not to break the spell.

Yugi frowned at himself, turned, seemed to struggle with his thoughts for a moment, and then crawled on his butt to a deeper end of the stream where the water came up to his waist. He returned to scrubbing the sand out of his hair with his back to Atem as if ignoring a pharaoh would make one disappear.

But the world was bright and Atem didn’t realize he was still grinning until he pressed fingers to his lips and felt a careful smile underneath his fingertips.

He kept grinning as he disrobed. It was a quick task, now that he had no small Yugis to seduce.

But when cool water licked at his toes, he made a noise of absolute pleasure, because it was nothing short of pleasure after a night of riding and an afternoon of soul-shredding exorcisms.

“Your majesty, do you mind?” Yugi called to him dryly.

“Oh, but isn’t the water nice?” it embraced him around the calves, lapping at his sides and welcoming him with cold currents. “Mh,” he purred and submerged himself.

It was good. So good.

Atem would go for a swim later, if the river gods would have him in the open waters.

For now though, he savored the icy sensation around his eyes and in the roots of his hair, and blew bubbles that tickled his nose. It woke him better than any tea or bloodlust ever did.

His lungs began to burn after a minute, but he held himself underwater if only to enjoy it just a little more. 

Yugi was staring at him once he broke surface.

What else was Atem to do, except try smiling at him and see how for it got him? He did not come to torment him. He came to have a bath in peace. Except Atem was a liar sometimes, and it was a bad habit when he chose to lie to himself. He came to catch Yugi in the nude and do absolutely nothing about it. That was the truth. He came to show his peaceful intentions.

Yugi caught his smile. Yugi seemed very unsure about it, and suspicion lurked behind his narrowed eyes and tight lips, as if they were playing a game and Atem was cheating.

“Why won’t you take your crown off, your majesty?”

His crown was a familiar weight against his temples. It sat firmly above his brow and it was a good day because it deigned not irritate the absolute hell out of his forehead. Yet. It was secure where it was and so there was no reason to remove it, unless he did decide to swim after all.

Atem wore it to bath. To occasional sparring sessions against his guards. Sometimes even to bed.

And, after two days of wearing it in the desert, his crown was hopelessly stuck in his hair.

It was always stuck in his hair, every minute of every day, and anyone who had ever actually _seen_ his hair would be a fool to think things like crowns and hats were friends to the pharaoh.

Yugi, the pharaoh noted, was burdened with the same glorious hair.  

Yugi knew these things.

Yugi was messing with him.

Atem took it lightly, and soon his suspicious companion broke down into giggles.

He was still giggling when he huffed and set his hands on his naked hips.

“You’re nice one minute,” he said fiercely, “and then you turn around and you’re absolutely _terrible_. And now you’re nice again. Respectfully, your majesty, please stop doing that.”

“Well, alright, if you insist,” Atem made it sound like a great chore. “Fetch me some puppies for the kicking.”

“Pfft.”

“Hn.”

“Okay. Okay, alright, I’ll help your majesty with the crown if you want, but if you touch me again, that’s it, forever. Okay?”

Atem wasn’t aware that he needed help with his own crown.

But he accepted the offer, and told Yugi that he shouldn’t give his trust away with such ease.

Yugi shrugged.

“I genuinely believe there’s good in everyone, and they’ll see it too, if you just give them a chance,” he said. Then he glared at Atem and added “or ten” pointedly.

“My majesty?”

“Your majesty,” Yugi made an elaborate bow in the water, swinging his arms and splashing.  

Atem tilted his chin regally.

“I am impressed,” he declared. “You may approach and serve your king.”

Yes?

Yes. Yugi made a slow beeline for him, slogging in the water and careful to keep his boy bits submerged, as if it he was used to hiding his body and shying away from uncaring eyes.

Well, Atem’s eyes _cared_ when they surveyed Yugi’s soft chest and skinny arms, so he supposed Yugi’s coy attempts to cover up had some merit. He made a point of keeping his gaze shoulder-level when Yugi hesitated a few feet away from him.

“I didn’t think this through,” Yugi admitted and looked away.

“You really did not. Come anyway.”

“Can you promise again?”

There was an unspoken end to his question, as if even saying the words terrified him. But his fears had little to do with his body being harmed or defiled. It wasn’t about his nakedness, or Atem’s nakedness, or him being shy or modest or unwilling or afraid. It was an altogether different kind of hesitation, one Atem didn't quite understand.

So Atem didn't promise.

Instead, he offered him a beckoning hand across the short stretch of water between them.

Yugi looked between Atem’s palm and the safe place he had left. He bit his lip and stared Atem dead in the eyes as he slid his wet fingers into Atem’s grip.

Atem closed his hand around them and knew he had caught himself a Yugi.

A Yugi that looked ready to slip between his fingers and bolt. What was he expecting, to get snatched and bent over a rock?

Atem tugged at his hand gently.

“The crown?” he reminded.

Yugi swallowed and took two agonizing steps toward him, slow and cautious, a small and embarrassed thing Atem somehow managed to hook, but braver with every second that nothing bad happened to him.

He grinned once the distance between them was courteous.

“Thanks for, you know,” he said. “Sit on the rock so I can reach you?”

Atem absolutely did not swell in his belly at hearing there were still people in the world shorter than him.

Yugi’s fingers were careful in the tangles of Atem’s hair, and the soft slosh of water behind his field of vision told him that there was a naked priest sitting on the rock behind him. He tilted his head back into Yugi’s hands and stole a peek at a creamy thigh by his side.

Atem could take him, if he wanted. He could turn around now, hold him by the shoulders and drag him to his lap. He could kiss his pretty body, touch it where he wanted, along the swell of his chest, around his rosy nipples, hold him by his sharp hips, by the waist – by the hair, by the throat if he screamed. He would kiss his mouth until it was his and squeeze fistfuls of ass and listen to him purr.

Yugi would like it, in the end. Atem knew he could get him to love his every kiss and every touch.

Instead, he nested himself further into the soft belly and relaxed into his fingers.

“Come to me whenever you want,” he muttered.

“What do you mean?”

“When you want – ah.”

He never appreciated how heavy the intricate metalwork of his crown was until it sat perched on a table and not his head in the cool hours of late evenings. He hardly paid any attention to the hairs it pulled because they would be cleared in the night by the girl who polished his jewelry, and it hardly mattered because it would sit proudly atop his head all over again once the morning came, being heavy and pulling hair.

It was an unfamiliar sensation, to have it lifted from his temples by gentle hands and feel no tugs in his skull.

Yugi was so gentle that he hardly felt his touch.

Yugi freed every strand.

Atem’s hands lingered when he handed the crown back.

“Um-”

The vague feeling in his stomach wasn’t unlike relief.

It made him twitchy, so he jerked to face Yugi and ignored a pasty hand that shot between pale thighs for the sake of modesty.

He grabbed him by the shoulders. Leaned in. Whispered.

“Next time you want to touch yourself, come to me instead.” There was haste in his offer.

“UM!?” Yugi shrieked, and his voice cracked.

“I will help you. It will be just for you. And if you ever want someone to open your thighs and fill you out and melt you to your bones, come to me. Do you understand the difference? Do you understand what I’m offering? I-”

Yugi stared at him, wide-eyed and pretty, clear droplets of water sparkling all over his face, and Atem stared back, just as wide-eyed and dazed. Did Yugi understand? Did _he_?

“Shh,” Yugi said, and there was something final about his words. “I get it. You like me and you never had anyone not like you back. I think it’s narcissistic, but you’re the pharaoh, so I get that I’m not supposed to understand you. Just don’t make me do anything, okay? Here,” he dipped his hand into the stream and presented Atem with a handful of water.

Wh-

He flicked it in his face.

Atem blinked at Yugi as his companion laughed and put a thousand windchimes to shame. He considered having him arrested again, for prosperity, then decided thinking around Yugi was about as productive as gagging him with his hand. 

So he did what boys would do, not pharaohs. He grabbed Yugi around the waist, ignored his choked giggles and threw him in the water.

 

3. 

They came from their bath breathless and laughing.

Atem even gave him privacy to shimmy into his underwear.

“Throw those out,” he told Yugi when the priest went to inspect the damage in his clothes. He threw him his old robe. “Wear this.”

Yugi looked at the silk once he picked it up from the sand - because of course he wouldn’t catch it, what did Atem except? – and he was at loss.

“I won’t take your gifts, your majesty, I hope you get why.”

“Then toss both out,” Atem rolled his eyes and began tying his new wrap. “I won’t have you riding with me in rags, and I have no use for that.”

“What’s wrong with it?” Yugi lifted it to the sun, “looks fine to me.”

“It’s damaged,” he said at the same time Yugi spotted an ant-sized hole in the shoulder. “I will never wear it again.”

“I see what you mean. It’s completely destroyed,” Yugi told him dryly. “I’ll take it only if you would really just throw it out if I don’t.”

“Then it’s yours.”

“Thank you,” Yugi bowed and it was nowhere low enough. It was a gesture foreign in many ways, and Atem wondered if he would care enough to ask little Yugi just what sort of place spawned him. But Yugi was quick to clip his thoughts with hesitant words. He said, “for what it’s worth, I hope you don’t get cursed. It really sucks.”

Atem chuckled at his choice of words. “It’s worse still when a sworn enemy curses you. I can’t imagine anyone swearing to be your enemy.”

“Hey!” Yugi frowned. “I’ll have you know I’m excellent enemy material.”

“Ha!”

“Oh, come on,” he bristled. “And anyway, curses work two ways, you know. You both get cursed. And you can say anything you want, but the truth is that you and Bakura are your own worst enemies.”

“Hn, aren’t you a clever thing.”

Yugi smiled a generous smile, the one that was contagious and benevolent and patient. Clean, groomed and dressed in silk, he looked nothing short of a prince. A short prince, but only nominally, because his words were rough and common and his posture was that of a slouching peasant.

But there was something regal in Yugi’s nightmarish eyes. It was in the lazy way he walked, in his still hands and in the tilt of his chin. Whatever it was, it lacked no strength or determination. Atem recognized it for a well-honed skill, something doubtless taught to Yugi because even Atem in his awkward childhood was a graceless child waddling around the yard behind his father’s skirts until he was purged of all passionate tantrums and instead taught to glide and reign. 

Yugi was allowed to hold onto his passions, that much Atem could see in his smiles, but he had a sweet grip on them, unlike the coils of greed children of privilege tended to develop over the things they lacked in their souls.

So who taught him? Atem would mistake Yugi for a boy if it so happened that they exchanged no words between them. But he wasn’t a boy, he was a man, and someone had taught him to be a man with gentle guidance, and so kind was that guidance that Yugi understood the world and still was friendly to everyone in it.

What a sweetie.

And then Atem recognized the coil of greed in his heart for what it was.

This _Yami_ taught Yugi these things.

And Atem grew jealous of a faceless man in an instant.

“Come,” he said and made sure his voice betrayed none of his feelings. “We must make it to town by dusk. You will sleep and I will select your jewelry from the market in the morning. I won’t have you riding with me plain.”

“Um, alright, but where did that come from? And I said I won’t take any gifts from you, your majesty, so-”

“You are getting jewelry,” Atem told him and left no room for arguments.

 _Mine,_ he thought, and had the better sense not so say it. 

 Once more he expected Yugi to follow.

Once more Yugi stopped in his tracks.

Atem’s fists clenched and he turned to face the nuisance that would defy Atem and annoy Atem and not let Atem put his hands on his pretty body, and instead he saw his new friend. A friend, that’s what Yugi was now. A short and cheerful little thing, standing small and alone in the sand.

“I just… The white side just lost the bishop. In my game. Anubis played his move and I lost a chess piece. He put the picture in my head.  Sorry. Kind of caught me off guard a little, don’t worry about it.”

Yugi sounded happy enough; he sounded as if nothing in the world was wrong.

But he wiped his face and found tears there. They confused him, and Atem watched him stare at his pale hand as if to anchor himself to something so he could sift through a memory in solace.

A long moment passed and Atem chose to believe little beads of dew that bubbled in Yugi’s eyes were just water from the river, and apparently that’s what Yugi chose to believe, too, because he didn’t seem particularly happy or sad. Just lost in thought, and bittersweet.  

“Tell me what you need,” Atem told him gently.

“Oh. Nothing. Just trying to remember stuff…” he licked his lips, weighed his words, said nothing else and watched Atem as if he would find his lost memory by staring into Atem's eyes.

He could think of nothing other to usher him along. Yugi forgot something, that’s what this was. As his payment for playing his silly game. Well, it wasn’t much of a loss if he didn’t quite know what he was missing.

And Atem was a gambling man as much as Yugi, and if it came down to having tells, Yugi was an open book, alas written in a foreign language - but Atem was very good at those, too. And in time, when he was ready, Yugi would tell him everything. Atem would bet on it, and Atem would win.

Now though, it was best to be kind.

“You will teach me your game soon. You lost a game piece – a bishop, was it?” he enunciated the foreign word carefully, “and you act as if you lost a person. Must be some game.”

“Bishop, that’s right,” Yugi smiled at him, but his eyes were a little duller. He slouched a little more. “It’s the tall one with the hat, remember? Anubis took it with a pawn.”

Yugi chattered away about his game the entire way until Seto met them, winded from riding alone to catch up to them, and requested to join them on their journey.


	8. Enemies, Pt. 2

 4.

Atem’s expectations did not betray him. There was a certain degree of festivity expected of the villagers when a living God marched his army into their drab fishing town. His entrance, very unannounced and not at all festive, began to gather a crowd of prostrate onlookers a good mile before the city gates. They were graceless in their kneeling, and the disharmony of their prayers began pounding on Atem’s skull within minutes. It would only get worse, he knew, and kept his face carefully blank.

But in his lap, Yugi squirmed with a bit too much public treason for Atem’s taste – excited, curious, uncertain – Atem neither knew nor cared, because now was not the time for it.

Perhaps having him ride with a guard wasn’t a terrible idea, but it was too late for that now.

Atem kept his eyes on the horizon as he gave Yugi’s middle a good squeeze to get his attention.

“Don’t turn,” he said into the distance, his voice barely a whisper that bounced off the back of Yugi’s head in a steamy puff, “don’t speak. Don’t look at them. You will act as is expected of someone in your position. You are a public matter now. Now nod.”

In hindsight, Atem should have had a talk with him when they were still safe from greedy public eyes. But just as there was a certain degree of festivity that he expected from the village, so it was that he expected Yugi to know his place at least vaguely.

Atem should’ve known better.

But, surely, Yugi was capable of keeping his mouth shut and his back straight for an hour, as was Atem’s three hundred and sixty-six men army, as was Seto at their side, though for Seto a stick up his ass propping him straight as he brooded mutely fell within a frame of a healthy lifestyle.

He turned to Seto. “Foul mood?”

Seto, of course, denied experiencing emotions.

Atem frowned. “You spent, what, three hours alone with Aknadin? Did he try  _speaking_  to you? You poor thing. I suggest not caring next time. Does wonders for the blood pressure.”

“Of course, your highness,” Seto said stiffly, his stoic face betraying nothing.  

Meanwhile, Yugi, the treacherous little bastard, shook his head.

Now was not the time for this.

“You will not embarrass me in public,” Atem told him. “I won’t hurt you for it, but I will remove the peasants who would see it, and I expect you won’t much like that. You will,” he squeezed him again, “act appropriately. Nod. No? Why not? A question? Tell me what it is. Quietly.”

“I-don’t-know-what-to-do?” Yugi hissed quickly. “Why are you suddenly so serious? Are we in trouble? Did I do something?”

Atem stared ahead, though he felt a smile tug on the edges of his lips. Well. If a smile should betray him, he would just throw it at the crowd and they would consider it an act of divine benevolence.

“Hush,” he said. “I only want your best etiquette. Don’t speak to me, don’t look at them, keep your eyes on your feet.”

“Oh, I knew that, your majesty. Never mind. I didn’t know what you were asking.”

“But you still don’t know,” he said, and chose to not elaborate. Let him be startled by the limelight of being a favorite.

They marched for some time like that, Yugi all stiff and proper against him, though Atem suspected he was either astonished by all those who knelt before Atem’s glory, or he needed to take a piss.

The crowds, meanwhile, grew larger, and soon the muddy streets became littered with peasants dirtying their faces on the ground. Their voices grew unbearably loud once the army breached the gate, with their moaning and the pleading and the praise, a single note of cacophony into his numb ears, and Atem found himself gripping Yugi’s stomach a little tighter.

Riders came to greet them, with silver buckles on their mounts and silver braids in their hair. Ten of them dismantled in choreographic unison, dropped to their knees at the feet of Atem’s horse (great horse, amazing horse, no horse for you, Yugi) and pressed their foreheads into the dirt.

The eleventh and the most armored one approached the final rider whom Atem assumed to be the town’s lord - a hairy middle-aged man with a cautious face – and helped him down before the both of them too had dropped into a proper prostration.

Yes. So.

Nice weather they were having.

 _One,_  he counted. A fine evening, indeed. A bit chilly for the season. Very unusual and most welcome.  

 _Two._ Good cloud cover, too. Great for the skin.

_Thee, eight nine ten._

Atem really had no patience for this.

 “Rise,” he ordered prematurely, and added an impatient edge to his voice to make up for what otherwise would be blatant disrespect to his own holy person. But it was only treason if it were someone else.

Atem was known for his impatience, so the lord and his riders thought it an honor.

“The great lord So-and-so, blah-blah-blah-” one of them declared, and Atem thought of the pleasant breeze against his skin and how good Yugi smelled. Did they import gapes into this fish town? Atem could really go for some grapes, perhaps even feed some to his new companion. “…welcomes the great and mighty pharaoh-”

By the time the speech was done Atem was so thoroughly bored that he had half-way untied the back straps of Yugi’s robe. He began tying them once he realized Yugi had gone stiff beneath his fingers, and nodded at Seto when a reply was expected of him.

“The army will find their own lodging, and his royal highness will accept the hospitably of your guest house, my lord,” Seto said, his voice betraying nothing. Lord  _what_ , Atem wondered, and suspected he was lord So-and-so to Seto, too. Seto must have formed his own extensive opinions about the weather, as well, though it might be a little different all the way up where his head sat.

Tall people.

“We will have a feast to celebrate!” the lord proclaimed, but Atem knew the small town could scarcely afford extravagance.

“Perhaps a good breakfast instead,” Atem told him evenly. “I am not long for this town, though your hospitality is appreciated.”

“Entertainment, then!” the man did not have a particularly strong presence about him, and it would shame him if the pharaoh rejected his unworthy gifts.

So Atem nodded and said “as you will,” with a hint of pleasure in his voice the man would not know to be false.

The lord appraised Yugi and nodded his respects, and Atem was struck by an uncomfortable hunch that he will be presented with a handful of slave boys come sundown. The last time he fucked a boy was when he himself was a boy. Once he was a man, the age thing always made him cringe, so did the expectation that his royal cock must be sheathed in something warm and pretty at all times, and Mana had once joked his dalliance was the most decent thing about him.

Weather, weather. One, two, three.

The lord was unassuming enough to leave Atem without a lasting impression of any kind, and it would be a waste to replace him because of a disgusting misunderstanding. So he added “I heard the women here have many talents,” to spare Yugi from witnessing an unnecessary beheading.

As their procession marched deeper into town Yugi’s patience began to falter. Subtle fidgeting became shy glances into the crowd, and as endearing as he was, Atem could not have it. So he kindly cracked the lead and sent them galloping down the streets, and Yugi barely had the good sense to grip at the saddle.

Compound gates.

Lovely gardens.

Decorated hallways.

Guest chambers.

Door. 

“Oww!” Yugi whined the very moment the doors had closed behind them. “And I thought riding slow hurt. Ouch,” he rubbed at his thighs and made faces. 

Atem stroked his arm with his knuckle to get his attention.

“Walls have ears,” he reminded, though if he did catch the lord spying on his private affairs he would have him executed for disloyalty. “And we are about to have company.”

“Huh?” Yugi said comically, and then stood rooted to the floor when one by one the girls slipped in through the consort entrance.

Oh, the  _girls,_  with their skilled hands and – yes! thank all gods - makeup wash and grapes.

Yugi looked like he had died and went to wherever it was that Anubis sent dead people when it were half-naked girls that killed them.

“Clothes on,” he said in nonchalance, “you are all lovely but I am not in a mood for you, and I don’t want  _that one_  in a mood for girls.”

The two topless women tugged their dresses up in shame, and Atem wouldn’t have it so he smiled at them with his eyes and had one help him unlock the fastenings on his collar. She was a sweet and daring girl with pretty black hair and she brightened up once he told her as much.

Two other ones went to fetch tubs and washcloths, and the forth one started for Yugi.

And bashful, mumbling Yugi still stood before her, frozen, mortified, beet-red down to the roots of his hair, and Atem let his girl rub his back only to allow the scene to unfold. The absolutely  _terrifying_  five-foot-nothing woman approached Yugi with the unclean and sinful intention of untying his sandals, Ra and all the gods help his soul, and he was shrieking like a muffled tea kettle as soon as she touched his arm.

The horror.

He pleaded Atem for mercy with his eyes alone, finally muted, and Atem hoarded the knowledge of what it took to finally shut him up. But the pharaoh was unmoved by his pleas, and all he could do to resist laughter was grin at Yugi and wiggle his brows.

Yugi whined and hid his face in his hands when the girl dropped before him.

She was literally going for his sandals. And Yugi knew this, because she just told him as much, and still he cowered before a girl.

Atem snorted.

“Relax for him and it won’t hurt,” the girl whispered to Yugi in what she thought was total discretion after she probably assessed the situation and concluded Yugi was about to get deflowered by a scary god.

That did it.

Atem was laughing; the bursts of it came tearing right out of his throat and rang loud in the room, and his girl was giggling too, though she likely had no idea what had him going. Yugi’s girl was embarrassed, Yugi confused, the two with the washcloths smiled because it was appropriate, and the whole thing made Atem throw his head back and laugh freely for a while.

“It isn’t  _me_  who worries him,” he managed between his chocked laughter, and Yugi’s girl was mortified, ashamed, a million things that made her seem like she would cry, and so he pushed Yugi out of the way and stroked her hair in comfort.

“Easy, dear. All of you. Easy. You as well,” he nodded at Yugi who looked at Atem with stern disapproval, all like, what are you doing making girls cry, and Atem would take him seriously if his skin wasn’t still an embarrassed shade of pink. “We are friends here.”

He had all four women relaxed within minutes, and they were graceful and attentive once they weren’t afraid of him.

All four, not five, as Yugi still squirmed, uncomfortable when the girl raised a washcloth to his face and arms.

“It’s alright,” he told her when she went for the straps on his robe, “y-you, um, don’t have to do-that-ohmygod it’s really okay!”

“Don’t be shy!” she told him.

“Shy, ha!” Atem laughed at the two of them.

“No?”

“You haven’t the faintest idea what kind of shy he isn’t.”

“Hey!”

Atem chuckled again, amused.

“She is happy she entertains you,” the one with pretty black hair said on her friend’s behalf while trying to run a comb through Atem’s hair, all in vain, and he leaned into her and yanked at her hair in good humor. She laughed and stopped it. “But how will you have us entertain this one?”

“This one,” he pointed to Yugi who was swatting at his girl. The girl was now at the point of just poking him and giggling, and he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do about it. “This one doesn’t know how to play senet.”

The women all gasped in mock horror.

“Bring us a board,” he grinned. “And more robes for each of you. It should put him at ease.”

“Aw,” one pouted as she got to her feet, “he doesn't like girls? Such pity.”

“No,” Atem told her, nodded at Yugi’s girl and she prodded him in the ribs until he backed enough for Atem to catch him and pull him into his lap. “I think he likes you all a little too much. Oh, and grapes. Robes, and more grapes, and a senet board.”

 

 5.

He dismissed the girls an hour later, one by one, as Yugi won their challenges on his first try.

Watching him win the first few games he had ever played brought Atem more pleasure than the entire town of pretty girls.

“Play me,” Atem coaxed him with a sweet tone once they were alone on Atem’s spacious guest bed.

“Hm,” Yugi told him, relaxed and trusting, “could I get a rain check on that?”

“A what?”

“Could I play you later?”

“Why later?”

“I could use a few more practice games,” he said with a grin. “You’re very good, I’ve heard, and you like a challenge,” he said with a face of a lying and adorable double-crosser. “Fine! I just don’t like losing so I want to practice a bit first.”

“Very well,” Atem said, and ever so subtly went to fiddle with a loose thread on the edge of Yugi’s robe. His words were just a faint whisper when he murmured, “stay the night.”

“Hm.”

“Hm? Not a ‘no’? I could seduce you into it; it wouldn’t be difficult at all.”

Yugi, unseduced, twisted in his lap to face him, and a sweet coil of anticipation wrapped itself around Atem’s lower belly when Yugi braced himself on Atem’s lap and leaned so close that his long lashes fluttered against his cheek.

Atem could feel his warm breath on his lips, stray hairs tickling against his own, and the space between them was intimate somehow, as if little Yugi wasn’t the one vulnerable and powerless in his arms. He had an air of serenity about him, as if he was exactly where he wanted to be, safe and happy to just exist next to someone he knew intimately, knew well, someone with whom he would share his little world. 

The moment felt familiar, though Atem couldn’t even begin to imagine how the feeling came to be. But time was theirs alone, and until Yugi would remember Atem was not his missing lover, and Atem would remember he was only interested in nesting between receptive thighs and making Yugi his, it was  _their_  moment, and Anubis could take all his thoughts and guide them all directly to hell. 

Yugi’s eyes had a kind look in them, one of love that was an entirely different sort of love than the one all about appreciation or loyalty, and Atem didn’t much know what to do with it except trace the back of his knuckle along the curve of that pretty face.

“See,” he whispered against Yugi’s lips, catching them with his mouth around his words, “easy.”

Yugi grinned, wide and forgiving. “Your majesty needs to stop talking before he ruins this.”

Scandalized, Atem slid his fingers along the folds of Yugi’s silk robe until he found the angles of his sharp hips beneath the fabric. He massaged circles along his hips and belly and Yugi leaned into him, sweet and unafraid, giggling as Atem peppered his brow and cheeks with soft kisses.

He knew Yugi’s sweet complacency wouldn’t last when he felt fingers slip between his and halt his ministrations.

Yugi kissed his temple.

“I don’t mean to be a tease,” he said, “but, well…” he trailed off, but his soft hand betrayed him and instead of being drawn away Atem found his fingers pressed firmly into warm stomach.

Atem drew him close.

“You want my hands on you. Don’t deny yourself pleasures, you are far too precious that.”

He teased his free hand down the cloth and under it, Yugi’s naked thigh hot beneath his fingertips, and he caressed his way up until the skin became thin at the base where thigh became that soft space between orifice and stones. He ghosted his fingertips over the inch of safety while he considered if Yugi would take better to his fingers over his entrance or on his cock, and Yugi closed his eyes, pressed their cheeks together and made a pleased noise in the back of his throat.

“I don’t know what I want,” but Atem only heard the subtle hiss of his consonances. “I want to kiss you and maybe remember.”

He felt gut-wrenching pity then, and he pressed his lips to Yugi’s over and over, though he hadn’t the faintest idea why, and Yugi took his noisy kisses with greed and giggled when Atem thought what the hell and cupped his ass with both hands.

“What?”

Yugi was staring at him fondly.

“You finally calmed down. I like that in great omnipotent pharaohs,” he said, teasing, took Atem’s face in both hands and pressed his parted lips to his.

He must have meant he wanted the filthy kind of kissing, because his mouth was hot and wet and sweet and his tongue licked at Atem’s lips until Atem opened for him, and a sweet shy darling in bed Yugi was definitely not.

Their lips were swollen and ravished when they parted for breath, moist with strings of wetness, and Yugi looked at him with searching eyes and threw himself around Atem’s neck when he found nothing.

 Meanwhile, Atem still had two handfuls of ass.

“Nnh. No. Stop that,” Yugi muttered into his ear, now as far from his pliable enchantment as he could possibly get, and Atem knew he lost him, but he didn’t particularity care.

So he made a noise of disagreement and squeezed the flesh until Yugi jerked in his lap and pushed himself off, got caught by the waist and hair, and Atem earned himself good smack on the arm before he decided to be kind and release him.

Yugi rolled off him and lay staring at the ceiling at his side.

“You  _are_  a damn tease,” Atem grumbled, unkind. “What were you trying to remember, anyway, how to ride a cock?”

Yugi snorted and began chewing on his nail, entirely unoffended.

“If I’ve kissed y… like that before. But never mind. Say, your majesty, do you wanna go to town with me?”

“What?”

“I want to go to town.”

But. Atem had four pretty girls just outside his door, ready to remedy all the injustices Yugi had inflicted upon him.

“Why?”

“Just please?” Yugi turned on his and made ridiculous eyes at him.

Atem would say,  _‘now?’_  and  _‘no’_  and perhaps even question him about his boundless supply of energy, and instead he said “that’s hardly proper right now,” which was the weakest of all excuses.

To which Yugi replied, “but you were really bad incognito when we first met. You can totally do ‘improper.’ Come on, please?”

 

 6.

So peasant clothes, hoods, door, back of the gardens, back gate, and out to town they went.  Atem caught a few glimpses of Seto interrogating the girls, that two-faced pervert, though Atem suspected it had more to do with pinpointing Atem’s mood than Seto actually caring if he’d fucked them.

“Don’t get snatched, or I won’t have another chance to bed you later,” Atem warned him as if he had any control over it. “Stay with the guards.”

The late night market was a disappointing fair, not only because half of the merchants had already half-way packed their carts, but because it had at least ten times less shops than the busy market of the capital Atem frequented in what was apparently a ‘really bad’ disguise.

What did Yugi know anyway, his was equally terrible.

The jewelry merchant with his unimpressive selection of silver assumed no deceit when Atem’s disguised entourage approached him.

“You two like anything?” one of his guards asked Atem and Yugi, mortified as ever to address Atem but bound by his duties to appear inconspicuous, and Yugi shook his head sternly. He faked disinterest well - or maybe he was really not interested in trinkets – but Atem could care less. The sooner he put any kind of jewelry on him the sooner he would indebt him. It never failed him once, and he was sure at the end of it Yugi would let Atem put his mouth on him if only out of awkward gratitude.

Good thing Atem had the brilliant idea to go to town.

Here, he could try salvage his sex life by buying jewelry.

His wisdom was so truly boundless that he even nodded to himself at his own brilliance.

Later, Atem would pick out something nice and gold and well-crafted once they got back to the palace, but for now a silver merchant in the middle of nowhere would have to do.

“Don’t you have anything gold?” he complained anyway, sure there was something ‘precious’ and ‘extravagant’ and ‘of personal value, but his at the right price’ in the depths of the jewelry cart.

“I don’t really like gold,” Yugi supplied in a very straight-forward manner, not at all discreet that he knew the whole charade was about him. He was annoyed to be here. Fine.  Atem would buy him the bulkiest, ugliest thing there was, then.

Which happened to be a square tiara with jeweled bull horns and some kind of star just off the middle, trimmed with leopard fur on the bottom and unpolished where mismatched jewels sat.

He almost named it, if it weren’t for a set of bracelets and a neck collar just next to it. They were plain, well-cut, well-polished, and they pinged Atem with just the right amount of nostalgia because he had a set almost like it when he was a child and Father was done with him shedding gold in his poor attempts at climbing trees and chasing cats. It was discipline silver, meant to somehow induce appreciation in the prince (for what, colors? Years later, Atem still didn't get it), but the lesson went about as well as anything concerning Atem could ever go.

He did end up learning to periodically check locks on his trinkets only because he thought the discipline silver was cold and plain and clever once he got to know it well; it would always be honest with him, and only Atem knew it was icy, loyal, and kind of blue in the right light.

Such aggressively platonic silver. 

The silver looked good on Yugi, Atem noted once his sudden memory trip ended; the collar and the bracelets, and it did the trick of debt because Yugi seemed to like it despite himself.

Atem turned to the merchant and asked how much. He didn’t care, but he was bored and very thoroughly un _laid_ , and the greedy glimmer in the merchant’s eyes was something he would enjoy spoiling.

The tale of the knockoff went something like this: “-one of great pharaoh’s personal treasures-”

Ha.

“-forged by the royal jewelers-”

Wrong.

The asking price was somewhat high, and the merchant went straight for little Yugi and his doubtless extravagant demands on Atem’s purse. “-looks very handsome on you, young prince, surely you can convince your friends to afford you such a small pleasure-?”

“No,” Yugi told him, glad to fade among into the sudden crowd crossing the plaza, “I don’t even want it.” He turned to Atem, pleading, hands already undoing the locks on the bracelets, “can we please not do this?”

Atem allowed his gaze to slide back to the rude salesman, and the man reeled a little at Atem’s stare.

“At least you like it?” Atem threw over his shoulder, eyes narrow and piercing.

When his would-be lover made no reply, Atem could only keep glaring. He didn’t turn for a while, afraid of what he might find, and he stood still until his stomach settled and he knew he wouldn’t lash at his guards or the merchant.

When he dared to look for him, Yugi was gone.

Atem and his entourage stood alone in the plaza, and it was a rare thing when the great god-king of an empire was made to feel so vulnerable.

The merchant was laughing at him by then, rancid and loud, demanding twice the price now that the goods could not be returned, and Atem wouldn’t even care for his head now.

He cared for Yugi’s head.

A guard paid the foul man, another took off in a fruitless search, two more stood in embarrassment, and all Atem could think of was if this was all there was to it, petty theft of something so completely worthless when Atem could deck him out in so much gold Yugi wouldn’t be able to take the weight of it.

 “Bring him back,” he hissed though his teeth and his words were poison of a betrayed man.

But he’d made this mistake before, and it had cost him more than a stupid trinket.

He will not be making it again. 

“No,” he hissed again, not believing his own words when he said “assume he was taken. Bring  _them_  back.”

Better, but it was all nothing but lies.

He could still taste Yugi in his mouth, though now his taste was bitter.

  

7.1.

Personally going after Yugi was a bad idea.

Ditching his guards to chase another prophetic dog was a much worse one.

And when the dog casually lead Atem to a back alley shack someone at some point had called a house, he knew it was the same blasted jackal form the river, with purple eyes and probably a product of when Anubis had puppies that one time, because it disappeared on him as soon as he heard bickering from within the shack.

Why did he insist on doing these things to himself?

He could’ve been in bed right now, getting fed grapes by pretty girls.

He could’ve been in Seto’s chambers, watching his favorite priest literally implode as Atem fed  _him_  grapes. Hell, he could try bonding with him. Atem was sure as hell in a good mood for it.

Instead, he was ankle-deep in mud and getting woodchips in his hair. He pressed his face into the cracked door, lured by sounds of petty fighting.

One of the voices was Yugi’s voice.

The other one belonged to a…

Alright then,  _wow._

He saw a gorgeous young man shouting at Yugi, unaware of Atem by their door. His skin was white marble, his lips were red, his eyes bright, and his stunning long hair was white wisps of summer clouds around his round cheekbones and pretty neck.

Where were all these attractive people coming from?

Did some rich lord have a massive harem breakout?

Why hadn’t anyone told him.

He would hang the lord and appropriate the rest, if where were more of them stashed somewhere. 

“Because you’re a control freak!” the pretty sheep boy was trying to scream, but his voice was too timid for it.

“Am not!”

“Are too! You have ten strategies for making a fucking sandwich!”

Yugi was cute in his gentle ferocity, and Atem felt mercy for him in spite of stolen jewelry he was still wearing.

“Shut up!” Yugi said with little conviction. “I had to have some control over it, I’m not about to just throw myself at-”

“Don’t talk about him like that! You have your weird friends, and I have  _one_! You know that!”

Yugi deflated at once.

“What?” the pale beauty demanded, his cheeks still red in anger, but he and Yugi were both so charming in their rage it was difficult for Atem to take them seriously.

“I lost a bishop,” Yugi muttered.

The ‘friend’ went paler than his hair.

“You  _what_?! Which bishop?  _No_. No!”

“The… the other one,” Yugi confessed and stared at his feet.

“Oh,” his friend deflated, too. “Sorry. So I guess he’s..?”

“No! He’s right there in the guest mannor. Doing stuff.”

“Oh. Well, what does that mean?”

Yugi pulled at his hair, exasperated, and glared at his friend.

“I don’t know what it means, you’re the one who cursed the damn board, you tell me!”

What the hell was  _that_  supposed to mean?

Atem asked this with much harsher words as he stepped through the entrance, eyes narrow and chin tilted just so. Two pale heads snapped in his direction, both wide-eyed and guilty, especially Yugi whose entire body language - right down to the tips of his hair – read exactly ‘oh shit’ a thousand times over.

His friend looked only slightly less busted.

“Oh, pharaoh!” he blinked, “…hi!”

For fuck’s sake! His disguise was surely not  _that_  bad!

“Your majesty,” Yugi piped in. “Did you follow me, or-”

“Oh! Oh, no. Shit!” the white fluffball Yugi had for a friend had a infuriating habit of staring Atem straight in the eyes, and Atem wouldn’t care much if he didn’t just acknowledge knowing who Atem truly was. Knowing made it treason, and unlike Yugi whose rude company he more or less learned to tolerate, the pretty cottonhead had not earned the right to stare at him.

“What?” Yugi said at the both of them.

“Shit!” his friend repeated meaningfully.

Atem just stared between them, incredulous such people even existed.

“You pretty things, were are you coming from?” he asked no one in particular.

 And then Yugi got whatever his friend was trying to convey to him with a series of panicked hand gestures.

“Shit! Shit, shit! Uh, um, okay, okay closet?”

“Closet!”

The two of them took Atem’s hands, their palms soft and unthreatening, and nudged him to-

“Wait a minute,” the dots connected in Atem’s head just in time for him to shrug Yugi off his arm. This was beyond ridiculous. “Are you two out of your damn minds?!”

The white sweetheart shushed him, then exerted what for him must’ve been monumental effort and pushed Atem toward the closet. Atem kind of swayed a little at such brute force. “Pharaoh, hi! I’m Ryo, nice to meet you, could you please hide in the closet? I would appreciate it very much!”

“You have to hide, your majesty,” Yugi insisted and joined his friend’s pushing efforts. Together, they had about the strength of a rice cracker between them.

So Atem looked over them both and kind of… went to hide in the closet.

His life was very hard.

And just as his door shut the front one burst open, and someone barged into the room with angry steps.

Atem peered into the crack between the hinges, and the wheels of his ridiculous world rolled to a grinding halt. He stopped breathing.

_No._

Atem sat with traitors on his council and watched them plot against him while smiling at him across the dinner table. He returned lies to liars who thought him to believe their lies, and he acted ignorant and careless when they spun tall tales to excuse their treachery.

But the one kind betrayal he was not expecting was  _this_  kind, and from  _Yugi_ , and it was a solid kick to his lungs that knocked the breath out of him and he didn’t believe it even though he was seeing it with his own eyes.

It was at that moment that Atem thought:

_Oh._


	9. Enemies, Pt. 3

No chill.

 

7.2

There was fluid grace to his madness, in the way the Thief’s feet stomped against the dirt floor but his entire frame seemed to glide over it, like a viper in the sand, or maybe a throw knife, and for a moment Atem was equal parts apprehensive and small, until his hand curled around the Puzzle and he was reminded once again that a pharaoh too had glided and strutted and stomped.

The pinhole cracks around the hinges of his pantry offered Atem little reassurances, except that he was at least well-hidden. The door was unassuming enough and the light of the room cast shadows over it just so. He won’t be found, alone, in peasant clothes and hiding for his life in a rundown cupboard, not unless one of the little bastards _told_.

But not yet, it seemed.

Sweet pale Ryo was unfaltering in his timid charm. He stood meekly before the Thief, hyperaware of his every move but somehow at ease when a heavy hand came down on his head to pet him roughly, like a dog or a donkey or a sparring partner after a particularly unforgiving fight. Except, Atem knew the Thief didn’t spar and pet his opponents. The Thief snapped necks.

And Atem’s heart pinched for a dreadful moment until all he saw of Ryo’s injuries was a tangled mess of white hair.

Ryo greeted the Thief with the same sweet ‘hi’ he greeted a Pharaoh, all pliable and casual, except the edges of his lips curled pleasantly when the Thief tapped him on the head again.

Yugi and Ryo did not belong in the rough parts of town, never mind in the rough hands of the most dangerous man in Atem’s empire. They belonged locked away safely in a fortress somewhere, where such men would only dream of getting near pretty things like them. And there was no mistaking it in wary way Ryo moved, pliant and inoffensive, that his sweetness was his only defense against the beast. There wasn’t enough strength in his thin arms to push Atem into a closet, and Atem was never a fool to think being a god somehow defied his own physical limitations, so he knew sweet Ryo wouldn’t be able to push the Thief off himself if it came to that.

Whatever the Thief did to him – or had done, will do – touched him with those filthy hands of an untouchable, and probably worse, much worse, the sweet cottonhead could only smile and take it, and the thought of it twisted into Atem’s guts and hissed.

But it was Yugi who worried him.

Yugi stood wide-eyed and gaping, craning his head up and _up_ , as if he expected another thief, a shorter thief, one with a smaller presence, cleaner hair, and fewer ghastly scars.

And being so near him, with no guards and few weapons except the Puzzle, watching his rampage and smelling his sweat through the flimsy cupboard door made Atem slightly in awe, too, like a boy faced with a fierce warrior, except Atem was not a boy and Bakura was not a warrior, and so his teeth itched and his palms sweated and his mind was alert and visceral.

“It’s clear,” the Thief grunted in a rough and lazy voice as if he owned the room and everyone in it, and Ryo smiled at him in something not unlike fondness.

Atem took another look, and surely enough, yes, there was fondness.

“Are you sure? No one followed us? _No one_?” Ryo said with a teasing edge to his voice.

 _What the hell are you doing,_ Atem wanted to scream at him, _get out of there, run you idiot._

The Thief threw him a frown.

“The fuck you take me for? It’s fuckin’ clear if I say it’s clear!” he bellowed.

_Run._

But Ryo didn’t run. Neither of the sweethearts did, and it was of some consolation to Atem that Yugi was probably faster than his friend. His Yugi might be the one to make it, if he tried.

Ryo, meanwhile, beamed fondly and held both hands out for the Thief. “Of course it’s clear, what am I thinking, you would know better. You’re an excellent thief,” he said, “very vigilant and careful and everything,” and Yugi snorted and gave Atem’s closet the stink-eye.

From the looks of him, Bakura was thinking along the same lines Atem was thinking, which was _‘what the fuck,’_ but he was tolerant of it somehow, and he ignored Ryo’s outstretched arms when he picked him up by the waist, with one hand and roughly, and all the white beauty could do was twist his little fingers into the red coat Atem’s Father once wore, and hang on.

The Thief was touching people so freely, with those unclean mitts of his. It disgusted Atem having to witness it.

If he put his untouchable hands on Yugi, if only to dust him off or pick a spider out of his clothes, he would die for it then and there.

 “Well… yes,” he nodded and inflated his scarred, well-muscled chest, looking ridiculously proud, and the situation just didn’t quite add up in Atem’s mind because what else was the Thief if not just the Thief and the Thief only? “Yes I am. Right. Good. Now, back to the the little matter of what the fuck,” he set Ryo to the floor and started for Yugi, towering over him when he reached him, and Yugi smiled up at him, though the backs of his knees bumped into a chair when he backed away too far.

Atem, in his closet, clenched his fists and fiddled with the cool edges of the Puzzle. He will use it, if it came to that. And though his heart still stung from seeing Yugi with these people, he wasn’t entirely sure he could bear witness if the Thief forced himself on the little pest or hurt him in any way.

“Uh, hello,” Yugi muttered, still smiling, more humble than Atem had ever seen him, and stared at his feet.

 _Good,_ Atem thought and exhaled a breath he didn’t realize he was still holding. It burned all the way out, slow because he forced it slow, quiet because he didn’t want to explain to Anubis why he brought everyone within a half-mile radius into the Afterlife with him.

When disbelief settled, hysterical giddiness began to creep up his throat the more he understood of their precarious and yet absolutely ridiculous situation.

Meanwhile, Yugi shrunk into himself the closer the Thief got to him, and it aggravated the man because his shoulders uncurled and his presence took up the entire room once more.

“The fuck you just say to me?” he spat. Ryo put a soothing hand on his shoulder but the Thief only shrugged it off and stepped so far into Yugi’s personal space that the little thing tripped and fell back into the chair.

“I said hi?” Yugi shrieked and forced his smile to stay fixed to his face. “I’m Yugi.” He fiddled with a loose thread on his robe and shuffled in his seat. When he looked up, his eyes were firm. “Um, I don’t know what you want me to say here. Thanks for kidnapping me so I could talk to my friend? Uh… you’re kind of looming, and you’re already pretty scary so there’s no need to do that, like, I assure you I’m intimidated, there’s no need to beat me up or anything, so, uh, maybe you could back up a little, that would –”

“Holy shit,” Atem could practically see the Thief’s uninjured eye twitching, “shut the fuck up! How the hell does he stand you?”

“The pharaoh?” Yugi supplied. “Oh. He kind of… doesn’t.”

The Thief squinted and bent his back into an impressive ark to match Yugi’s pathetic eyelevel.

“Whachyou mean?” he said and apparently forgot to pass as intimidating.

“That… he kind of hates me when I talk a lot?”

“Oh,” the Thief said. He deflated and glared intensely at various things around the room until he found something gross in his mind, probably an idea, wrinkled his face at it, and went to scratch the back of his head. “So you’d say he’s a piece of shi- I mean, a Very Bad Person?” he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. “Mean? To a darling like you?”

“Um,” Yugi also looked around the room, about as uncomfortable as the thief in his flirting. “Kind of, a little bit, I guess?”

“Fuck yeah! I mean, no, fuck, bad, very bad! So, here’s the thing… nice… young man,” he said with a sour face as he tasted polite words probably for the first time in his life. “You ever consider a bit of revenge? Just a little fun, hm? Maybe a little stab in the face while he’s sleeping, nothin’ too complicated-”

“No!”

“Oh my god!” Ryo called from behind them, threw his hands in the air and looked up to the gods for guidance, “would you shut up about the stupid pharaoh?”

“Stupid?!” the thief roared, “that’s fuckin’ mild, he’s a sack of shit, that’s what he is, and when I get my hands-” and off ranting and raving he went, roaring atrocities in a way that made Atem contemplate the meaning of life and find life’s little ironies hilarious.

“Ugh! Stop! I can’t take your bitching about the pharaoh anymore!”

Yugi chose that exact moment to pipe in. “Do you guys need a moment?”

So did they forget Atem was still reflecting on his poor life choices in the closet, or…

“Fuck off!” the thief groaned and combed a hand through his dirty hair. Ryo folded his arms and said that no, they were fine, Bakura could carry on with scaring the shit out of his friends. So the Thief said, “right,” and turned back to Yugi.

Then back to Ryo.

“Last time I grabbed one of these, the high and mighty cock-hat didn’t give a single fuck,” he said, pointing at Yugi. “What the hell I’m supposed to do with his slut now?”

“Hey,” Yugi said, “that’s really rude!”

“Well, fuck me, the hell happened to my manners!” the thief snapped. “My sincerest fuckin’ apologies to my most gracious and wise princess, may she rest in pieces when I’m done with her smart fuckin’ mouth!”

“Language,” Ryo insisted.

Thief shot his white-haired beauty a look that made one of Atem’s guards piss his pants that one time. “Bitch, d’you want a punch in your smart mouth, too?”

“Yes, with _your_ mouth! But not with that language!”

The Thief measured him with vicious stare, more annoyed than angry, and opted for tapping him on the back of the head again, appeased and a little basking if Atem read him correctly.

It was an excellent diffusion, Atem thought, so cleanly executed that Atem saw no insincerity when Ryo said it. Well done.

“Still got no use for the slut, though. He won’t trade for a whore. Could just sell him. Looks expensive.”

Yugi rolled his eyes.

“You have all that gold, what do you need more money for?”

“Well I can’t just fuckin’ let him go, look at him! And he’s the pharaoh’s slut, fuck! I’m so fuckin’ close!”

Ryo petted him on the back.

“Who said anything about letting him go? We’re not done talking.”

“You mean you’re not done screaming at me?” Yugi said. “Because I’m really done with that.”

“You need to stop your stupid games,” Ryo demanded, as fierce with Yugi as he was when Atem had caught them.

“I could break his legs,” the Thief offered.

“He is my friend so please don’t break his legs!”

“Oh, so you didn’t think about that when you asked him to grab me?”

The Thief looked between them for a single second and decided he will be having none of their shit today.

When he exploded on them, it was a beastly roar, something rough and nightmarish and powerful, and it weren’t his words or the pitch of his voice, it was the way his voice boomed _everywhere_ and demanded _everything_.

Thief _King_ Bakura.

It was a title Atem never denied him.

“Shut the fuck up!” he howled, and their bickering froze in their throats. “You, sit the fuck down! And you,” he turned to sweet Ryo, “get the fuck out a moment. Slut and I are gonna have ourselves a nice conversation.”

Yugi hardened, and Ryo with him, and they both swallowed, looked at each other, and tucked their chins to their chests.

“ _No_ ,” Ryo started, firm and pleading, “please-”

Atem will kill them. All of them. He clawed at the rough wood until splinters pierced him under his fingernails and his thoughts had to slog through miles of poison before he understood them, actions before thoughts, anger before common sense, and his hands were on the Puzzle and it whispered to him, sweet and dark, _kill him._ _Kill them all._

“The fuck you think I’m gonna do to him?” the Thief caught Ryo around the waist and lifted him as if the pasty thing weighed nothing, until their eyes matched and the very tips of Ryo’s slippers just barely glazed over the floor.  It was a strange thing to witness, Bakura the brute, the thief, the killer, manhandling a fragile thing like Ryo with a care reserved for wistful momentos and lovers.

“This was a terrible idea,” Ryo said against his nose.

“I fuckin’ told you, but did you care, hell,” he planted a kiss on Ryo’s forehead and Atem’s lip curled up in disgust. “Now get the fuck out, we’ll have a few words and he can go to hell for all I care. He reeks of the motherfuckin’ Pharaoh and I’ll peel your stupid white skin right off if the stink rubs off, fuck.”

Ryo stared, grabbed him by the hair and then-

Atem gagged a little.

“I’m not going anywhere,” the palehead insisted when they were done using their months for purposes other than speaking, and his feet dangled helplessly as if to prove him wrong. So the Thief did what a Pharaoh would do in his place, albeit more gracefully. He carted Ryo to the door and shoved him outside.

“I said fuck off,” he muttered lazily, chewed on nothing and set his jaw. He turned back to Yugi ever so slowly, eyes hard and piercing, and Yugi curled into himself and whined.

“Slut,” Bakura drawled, licking through his ‘l’ and edging his ‘t’ into click.

Yugi said nothing.

“You like games, right?” he licked his lips and strode to him, slow and lethal, and Yugi nodded, mute, and looked to his feet.

“So let’s play a fuckin’ game, yeah? It’s the one where you keep my pretty darling the fuck out of your bullshit, and in exchange I don’t slit your throat and send you back to your shiny golden god in pieces.”

Yugi nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you fuckin’ sure?”

“Crystal clear, sir.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yes?”

“Dunno. Just. Usually takes a bit more than that.”

“That’s all it takes, I swear,” Yugi nodded vigorously and his voice cracked as he ran out of breath, “you can call Ryo back now, and maybe, um, let me go? Possibly? Please,” he added with a shriek.

“Let me fuckin’ think about it. Nah,” he brought his face so close to Yugi’s that they were breathing each other’s air – if Yugi could even breathe at this point – and bracketed Yugi’s small body with his arms on both sides of him, not quite making contact but so close to it that Yugi should cringe at the thought of having touched such a filthy person, except Yugi was only terrified and not at all disgusted.

“He told me why you’re here, slut. Fascinating tale. Heartbreaking. Gave no shits about it. _You_ gonna tell me what the fuck _my darling’s_ doing here. He lookin’ for someone in this hellhole, or what?”

Yugi shifted.

“Uh… well, I don’t think so. He didn’t have anything left, so he sort of… came along. Uh. He seems to like you, though,” he added, and the Thief nodded and took his words for their face value. Surely, Atem’s nemesis was smarter than that? Except, apparently, he wasn’t.

“For some fuckin’ reason, anyway,” he muttered, self-conscious if Atem didn’t know better, his hands still not-quite making skin contact, and even in his crudeness the Thief knew better than to put his filthy hands on strangers.

But as he held them firmly at Yugi’s sides, Atem was once again reminded of how small Yugi was for how well he was handling this.

“Um. It’s not my place to say. Ryo has his demons. You have yours, everyone here’s a bit messed up in a way, I think.”

“Ha! Yeah, just look whose cock you’re riding, the fuck am I doin’ asking you? Shit. Well.”

He scanned Yugi’s body then, apparently just noticing him for anything other than a feeble thing he could torment, and Yugi mouthed a soundless “um” as the Thief knelt before him to match his sitting height, leaned into his ear and blew air into it.

“So are you any good?” he whispered, all silk and honey.

It was Yugi who made contact with an untouchable, pale little fingers against the savage scars on his face, reaching for his marked cheeks until he had the Thief’s ugly mug in his hands. Bakura jerked back a few inches as if Yugi’s hands were hot oil, and Atem though he used magic or poisoned his hands, but it was just disbelief that Yugi’s little fingers were where they were, on their own volition.

“Don’t.”

 It was all Yugi said, firm and severe, a gambler until the end, except it sunk into Atem’s gut like a useless weight that only made him hollow.

Idiot. Stupid little fool. What good were his protests now? He pleased Bakura’s eye, and Bakura had Yugi’s entire weight in muscle alone, so what could he do?

This was it, then.

Atem will not bear witness to this.

He didn’t want to, but he also couldn’t, watch it or put Yugi through it, and it would cost Atem his life but he was fine with it as long as it spared Yugi and killed the Thief.

He closed his eyes and reached for the shadows of the Puzzle. 

But then he heard a “tch,” and cracked one eye, just to make sure it really was Death Time O’clock for everyone, and he was glad he did.

Bakura was withdrawing from Yugi’s chair, to Atem’s disbelief, all sour but suddenly very uninterested in Yugi’s body. Bored with him.  Hell, he didn’t even survey what he was missing; he just detached himself and moved on.

“Fine,” he grunted, “whatever.” Then he yelled, “hey, other slut! Ryo, darlin’, come back in here, we’re all finished.”

But Ryo didn’t come, and the Thief was on his feet the moment Ryo took too long to answer and then didn’t answer at all.

“Fuck,” he swore one final time and  dashed madly through the rubble between himself and his exit, except his feet danced cleverly around the things, and Atem would’ve thought he was flying a soundless flight if he’d never seen or heard of the Thief King’s god-like agility.

A moment later, Yugi and Atem were alone.

Yugi sat in his chair, shivering, for a minute, two, five, until he braved the door. He stole one frightened glance outside, exhaled the entire western current, then ran for Atem’s closet, grabbed his hand, and then for a while all they did was run, run and run.

 

8. 

“That was scary!” Yugi laughed through his labored breaths, smiling like a mad fool and bracing himself against Atem, and Atem was chocking on aborted hysteria of his own at how stupid Yugi was for laughing.

They dissolved into giggles for some time after that, just clutching at each other and laughing until their kidneys hurt and their faces were red and breathless. Each time they stole glances at each other chuckles exploded from their throats, bright and happy, and Yugi started making faces then, saying things like, “did you see his face! All like,” he made his voice deep and gargling, ‘look, Ryo, I’m so manly, are you impressed with my strong language,’ I thought I would die! He’d kill me if I laughed, but oh my god!”

Atem held him close and chuckled, said things like, “he’s not even that tall,” and “He rants? He must really care about me. I’ve never felt so courted,” and Yugi laughed at his plain jokes and held his hand.

“That was fun,” Yugi beamed, smiling, but his body shuddered at random intervals once the laughter made way for terror to settle. Atem, too, was riding the adrenaline high, and he felt like he could go build a whole pyramid, all by himself, carry his army the short way back home, fuck the lord’s entre harem – fuck Yugi, kiss Yugi, do pleasant things to his body, except he disagreed, spying on Bakura from the closet was _not_ fun, actually quite the opposite of fun, and Yugi scrutinized him and kissed his shoulder and made eyes at him.

“Oh, come on! Where’s your sense of adventure, pharaoh?”

 _‘Same place your sexual appetites are, you little prude,’_ but he wisely didn’t say anything, Ra forbid anyone realized the Thief’s strong language had rubbed off. But they could’ve been in bed now, sharing kisses and each other’s company, except _someone_ had wanted to go to town.

This was better, somehow. It was exhilarating, terrifying, and he would under no circumstances go through it voluntarily, but it felt right, somehow, that he shared the experience with Yugi.

“Let’s have another adventure!”

What, _no_.

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Oh hey, look, temple of Anubis!”

“Do not- where are you going? Get back here!”

It was happening again!

Atem had just gotten his life back on track, _why was this happening!_

Yugi danced right through his fingers, and what could Atem do except chase his tail up the stone steps of the temple and through the back entrance where girls would lead boys for a bit of fun when the stables and hay barns were occupied.

Did Yugi know that?

When Yugi greeted him by hopping onto a drab altar and swinging his feet from its edges, giddy and excited, it became apparent that Yugi did in fact know this.

“This is a holy place, priest,” Atem chided him and meant none of it, “and also a funeral house. Have you no respect for your own vows?”

“Good thing no one died today,” Yugi sniggered and wiggled his brows.

“Well, go find the Thief again just to make sure. There’s an adventure for you.”

Yugi, bless his little soul, dangled his feet from the altar and inspected his nails.

“Well, if you aren’t interested in this sort of thing~” he said, coy but mocking, fluttering his lashes and chewing the smile on his lips. But Atem spied a light quiver in Yugi’s fingers, so he enveloped them under his hands and shushed all of his little hesitations with a kiss.

This was turning out to be a pretty good adventure. The Thief had somehow neglected to kill them – and that was great on its own – but he’d also managed to scare his Yugi silly - just enough to forget his romantic commitment, or have a moment of weakness. Lust. Indiscretion. Yearning. Atem didn’t particularly care why Yugi was suddenly so sweet in his hands, and Atem had the Thief to thank for it. 

A kiss on his moist and swollen lips. On the smooth cushion of his cheek. Atem ghosted his fingertips down the curves and swells of his collarbones and-

Thin fingers found their way into Atem’s hands and their pads slid along the soft membranes between his knuckles. Atem gave them a reassuring squeeze and nipped a gentle trail down the supple flesh of exposed neck.

 _Mine,_ he thought.

His to touch. His to open and fill out. His to share a body. That Yami will never have this. Never again. Yugi was his, his alone, and no one else’s. He’ll moan for him, laugh for him, share his kisses and little secrets, lock him up and keep him his.

But a hesitant tug in his hair made him withdraw, and a string of spit snapped against his lips when he was made to part with Yugi’s skin. Best keep him relaxed if Atem wanted those pretty legs to open for him.   

So he pulled back to look into Yugi’s eyes and reassure him with kind whispers.

“I won’t hurt you,” he promised, and Yugi surveyed him with more bewilderment than fright, brushed a thumb under Atem’s eye and considered his options.

“It’s not that,” Yugi muttered, bit his lip again, obviously too shy to ask of Atem for the things he needed. Atem squeezed his shoulder and leaned in for another kiss. “Um. Can you just kinda sit next to me?”

Atem humored him and joined him on the flat stone until their thighs brushed and Yugi seemed just as nervous, except determined somehow.

He clenched his delicate hands into fists, unclenched them, watched Atem and was embarrassed by it.

He then said, “okay, so. How about I just-”

His open thighs were hot against Atem’s legs when he mounted him bravely. His robe rode up his glistening flesh, and Atem was treated to creamy skin and its sweaty sleekness, slippery sweat cooling under Atem’s fingers when he bought his hands to appraise the treat.

When Yugi kissed him, it had teeth in it. They scraped along his bottom lip and there was tongue and moist lips and fierceness, all packaged falsely under the guise of filth. Again with the tongue. Atem was many things in bed, but rarely underneath anyone, and never fooled twice. He allowed one more wet swipe across his lips before he dug his nails into two points of contact – one into the skin just above Yugi’s thigh where flesh yielded for his fingers, and another in his scalp - and taught him filth with his own mouth.

A pleased sound bubbled in the vacuum between them before he allowed wet smooches, and Yugi was so good against him, purring in his lap when Atem tugged his hair and made him open wide.

“Hn,” he purred when they broke apart, took Atem’s hand out of his hair and pressed it roughly against his chest and practically ground it into his flesh as he dragged it down his clothed body.

A faint tremble in Atem’s knuckles told him he was close to ripping the rags off Yugi’s lovely skin and shoving right into the tight embrace of his body, holding him in his place and muffling his screams with kisses, and he shouldn’t, he knew he shouldn’t, it was a fantasy too violent for him, born out of frustration and pining, and so he sought comfort in flesh beneath his fingers and hissed his troubling thoughts into the confidence of his companion’s ear.

“I’ll fuck you. I’ll split you open and make you mine. You don’t want that. You _don’t_ -” he squeezed his thighs with punishing force, and Yugi hissed and shuddered and pressed his face into the crock of Atem’s neck. There will be bruises there come morning. “- _want_ that. What the fuck are you doing. What the fuck do you _want_ from me _._ ”

Yugi snorted, unafraid as if he didn’t believe Atem had meant every word, coiled his fingers into Atem’s hair and tugged, harsh but playful, and knocked their foreheads together when he spoke.

His face was red and flustered, but his smile was brighter than Ra’s blasted disk.

“I want to eat coffee with a spoon. Maybe clean your entire palace. Oh. I _definitely_ want play a nice card game, like against three people at once, I need that so bad right now, you have no idea. But I don’t have any of these things,” he huffed in frustration and bucked into Atem’s hands. “I have _you_. And, last time I checked, you were pretty interested in rubbing your genitals against my genitals, and so stop touching me like I’ll break if you don’t court me – I’m courted already, here I am, thoroughly courted, thanks – and _touch_ me.”

Somewhere in his graceless attempt to straddle him, Yugi had managed to lose his underwear. Such shame, as Atem dreamt about peeling it off his delectable backside and treating his eyes to gorgeous flesh, but it was no great loss after his hands found their way up the silky skin and two firm cushions of ass filled his palms.

Yugi purred in approval and ground into the sensation, though his cheeks burned red and his hands were still hesitantly roaming over the bottom half of Atem’s robes.

It was best to lose them immediately.

“Take off your clothes for me,” he ordered, low and demanding, and Yugi smiled and looked glad to find use for his hands.

He slid them along the curves of his pale face. Fingers brushed against his red lips and left a smile there when he noticed how pleased Atem was with the lovely sight of him touching himself. They brushed down his neck and over the first fastening of his robe. He pulled at it and an approving grunt tore though Atem’s throat when the top half of Yugi’s rags came undone. Soon, the belt too gave under trembling fingers.

Atem’s lips curled and his eyes grew hooded, misting his vision and blurring it around the edges, until Yugi’s supple body was all he saw. The curves of it. Its edges. The little dimple between his collarbones, the light swell of his chest. Perky, rosy nipples, already half-hard for Atem and very ready for sucking and biting and pinching Atem would give them. He will treat him well, he knew.

And Yugi’s cock. Yugi’s well-shaped and swollen cock, straight and nicely tipped, stood ready against his lower belly. Excited for him. Needy. Atem liked it well enough – he liked all of Yugi, really – and he ghosted his fingers down its length.

It earned him a soft moan, and Yugi was on him again, with his clever mouth and teeth and an arm around Atem’s shoulders, grinding his cock against Atem’s stomach and the hand he trapped there.     

He scraped his teeth along Yugi’s jaw.

“Go on, then,” he whispered, barely a breath, and Yugi broke his nibbling and stare into his eyes, cheeks red and eyes uncertain.

“So shy,” and yet so _not_ shy, not at all, only unsure but clearly wanting. Atem took his hand, kissed his knuckle and pinned him with his best regal glare so that all Yugi would see was Atem’s eyes as he pressed Yugi’s hand into his leg and made it travel all the way to Atem’s cock.

His fingers quivered in Atem’s grasp and against his skin, and he gasped when they recognized Atem’s length for what it was. Hesitant fingertips traced around his slit at first, sweet and teasing, and Atem held their faces together so he could watch how intimacy caressed Yugi’s expressive face with little shy lines and pretty glances.

“I’m touching your dick,” Yugi giggled like he snuck some sweets before dinner, pecked his lips and wrapped his hand around the base, firm and playful. Atem’s breath hitched and warm tendrils of pleasure began to coil in the pit of his stomach when he arched into Yugi’s touch with indignity of a man who’d been teased out of his mind for days.

He’d do that to Yugi, if he had the time. He’d have him on his back and clawing at stone before Atem would even touch his cock. He’d learn every inch of him with his mouth and Yugi’s body would tell him all he’d ever need to know while his mouth would hang open and muttering nonsense from pleasure.

He would, but Yugi planted his knees when Atem tried to reel him in. He could always hook a finger inside him. That’ll bring him down.

“No, I want- like this,” Yugi hissed and ground his cock into Atem’s thigh right against where he had Atem in his fist, pumping him steady and rocking into the motion.

Atem bore his teeth and grunted but let him work them both for a moment, if only revel in sudden pleasure that skipped at least a dozen steps in the middle and caught him frantic and hungry for it.

“T-together,” Yugi hissed into his ear and grabbed Atem’s shoulders for either balance or to prevent himself from just shutting his eyes and shoving himself against closest fuckable surface.

“What are you doing?” Atem yanked him back into the world by the hair. “Easy. Calm. Breathe,” he pressed  his palms onto his stiff and pale stomach and let them roam up the subtle bumps of his ribs until he found hard little peaks in the creases of his palms.

Yugi hissed again, impatient and frantic in his rutting. This was counterproductive, and Atem remembered something about togetherness in the fog of his mind - because Yugi’s haphazard hand on his cock and the arrhythmic humping were not helping him take charge of this mess at all – and he whispered the word until it made sense for him to finally untie his fucking belt and press their cocks together.

Yugi moaned. It was a desperate sound, raw and demanding, and Atem brought him down by the hair and made him look at how well their lengths aligned and how good the shades of their skin looked together.

Except Yugi was ready. His cock was thick and standing hard against Atem’s stomach, weeping pearly fluids and twitching at contact.

“N-nice,” Yugi managed and tried to touch himself, but Atem caught his wrist and jerked his head by the hair until his mouth hung open, limp and welcoming, and Atem shoved his tongue inside and tasted his moans.  

“Like my cock?” he purred and forbade anymore touching and humping, else he too would succumb to this insanity.

“Mn-yea-h,” Yugi whined and chewed his lips red.

“Ride it,” Atem cooed, words like a honeytrap on his tongue, “I’ll help you.”

Rendered almost nonverbal and useless except to lie back and take it, Yugi had still somehow managed a very solid refusal. It was in the subtle way his brows furrowed and his tongue licked at the roof of his mouth for the first letter of a ‘no.’ It was how his thighs quivered and his shoulders stiffened.

Atem understood the caress of fear as it ran all the way into the entrance of a hesitant body, and Atem knew coy desire of sweethearts who wanted grooming and coaxing with gentle fingers opening up willing flesh.

And Yugi wanted neither a good scare nor the charm of Atem’s hands.

He wanted to rut and scream his throat raw. Then and at that moment, he wanted nothing but to hump in the sand like pubescent boys.

It was almost lame if Atem wasn't so desperate for whatever Yugi would give him. Nowhere in that did Yugi even hint any desire to spread his legs and be used. And Atem could make him love it, he could make him scream just as loud and rut into the sheets with renewed fervor, and get stretched out and filled in and feel _completed_ while doing it, like pieces of a Puzzle fitting together with a teasing and seamless glide, but no. No, no, these were violent thoughts and Yugi would hate him for it if he took his sweet and easy body now that it was so hungry for any touch that it would take Yugi a long minute to come to his senses and fight it.

Atem’s cock twitched and his whole body shuddered. He wanted it so much his hands roamed the span of Yugi’s back, up and down, dipping between his cheeks and withdrawing only to return there in their absent wandering.

The boy – man – short little thing with hellish eyes that crawled out of hell for all Atem knew – was driving him absolutely insane with the way he was trying to grind their cocks together despite being held just out of reach.

“Fine,” alright, here, Atem thought – said, it didn’t matter - and he grabbed two fleshy thighs under the knees and brought them down to his lap. They bracketed Atem’s hips tightly as if they were made for it, and Yugi squeezed impatient handfuls of Atem’s shoulder skin and dragged his cock along Atem’s in an achingly slow line.

Oh Ra, Atem’s body was on fire.

Hands, nipples, right.

He shoved one of Yugi’s hands into his pale chest and told him to rub so he could watch it and also get those damn nailsto stop streaking Atem’s skin bloody with stinging red lines.

He grabbed their cocks into his fist and set a rhythm.

Yugi keened and pinched a nub between his fingers.

Twist it harder, you’ll like it more.

Move your hips.

And spread your legs, just put your weight on me, it’s fine.

But Atem managed only slivers of words and a few hissing consonances. “Fuck it,” had a ring to it, except it came out as “f-fuuck …t” and he used his spare hand to catch Yugi by a fleshy nub between his knuckles and squeeze it punishingly hard until Yugi screamed.

He let Atem’s fingers slip into his mouth easily after he picked up on how to handle his own perky nipples. He threw his head back and bucked and moaned, jaw loose and open, and Atem let his fingers roam its moist and soft floor, the insides of his cheeks, his teeth, his plush tongue that lapped at Atem’s knuckles as he reached so far back into it that moist spit became viscous and sticky and Atem’s fingers rolled in it until he coated them well.

He took Yugi’s mouth with his own when he was satisfied and finally pulled him down to lie against his chest.

“I’ll slip you a few fingers,” he whispered against Yugi’s chewed lips. “Take them. I’ll pull them if you don’t like it, yeah?” He spent his last cohesive communication token on whispering reassurances into his ear.

Yugi’s body was wound so tight and deprived that it took Atem a few licks with his wet fingers to get him soft enough to even probe down to the first knuckle.

Tight. Unyielding. Hot. Atem pumped their cocks and gave him a moment to relax into the touch.

“Hn,” Yugi moaned, hid into his shoulder and tried to rock his hips without impaling into Atem’s kind touch.

“Shh.”

First knuckle, second knuckle, ring. Fuck, he didn’t think ahead.

“I- hn. I don’t-” Yugi began but Atem shushed him with kisses.

“Just fingers, dear,” he tried to say and wondered if Yugi’d ever found his sweet spot before.

Their cocks were getting so sleek and throbbing that Yugi didn’t need it, but fuck if Atem would let him orgasm without at least trying to make it memorable.

“Push against it,” he said, or something like that, and Yugi got the hint and his body shuddered and opened and pulled Atem in gently.

So good.

So tight and so dry despite the saliva that his entrance had burned lightly against Atem’s fingers and he could only savor the thought of what it was like for his Yugi to take it and still purr at the touch the way he did.

Atem wanted to make him shudder and buck, make Yugi add ‘screaming Atem’s name’ to his ever-growing list of treason,  except how could he know Atem’s name, and when choked _“yeah… ah ye-a-!"_ became close to _“Ya-yam-”_ Atem kissed his mouth shut and never got around to finding a point of pleasure inside him - never mind that he wanted to get more than one finger into him - because Yugi was screaming into his mouth and spilling all over their stomachs and bucking into Atem as he rode out his jagged pleasure like he had set out about getting to it – wild-eyed and uncertain about everything except his needs.  

The sight of his wrecked face and supple arching body, streaked with marks and dotted with kisses, made Atem press his body down against himself and finish into the tight space between their bellies.

Hell.

He groaned. He cursed.

He held him close and wasn’t anywhere nearly as disappointed as a king ought to be with an inexperienced lay that, for some reason, in his dumb little head, had decided it was a good idea to crawl on top without any idea what to actually do once he was there.

Little idiot.

Atem tangled his fingers into his hair and waited for the high to pass. But it lingered as a soft and warm sensation on his lips, on his chest, in his belly, in his balls, in his knees, and even in his heart.

A proud giggle snapped him out of it, though he supposed he could laze around and enjoy his contentment for as long as he wanted because he was a fucking pharaoh with a gorgeous naked man in his lap and he could do whatever the hell he wanted. And fucking on an altar in a mortuary was apparently it, but he could sell it as a spiritual quest if anyone ever asked.

“Hi,” Yugi giggled again and stole happy glances around the room.

Atem rolled him to his side and kissed his cheeks red before he got around to addressing the mess and then later, much later, shrugging into his clothes. 

“So what was that?”

"I-oh," his face fell. "Was I bad?"

Atem did not permit his lips to stretch into a grin, but they did on their own accord, and Yugi looked reassured in the time it took Atem to say, "I enjoyed myself. Did you?" Yugi nodded. "Good. But this isn't what I was asking."

“Oh,” Yugi watched Atem string his arms through his sleeves with an odd tint of fondness to his smile, “ well, Bakura kinda got you laid. And, I guess I wanted to make a mistake. With you. Is that weird?”

“Make more mistakes,” Atem told him dryly because he knew what was to follow.

“I won’t,” his smile turned wistful, “I’m sorry, I know I’m leading you on and I shouldn’t. You got what you wanted though, right?” he said, frowned after he said it, and clapped a hand over his mouth, “I’m sorry! Was that too harsh? I didn’t mean-”

Atem shut him down with a glare, meant to convey just how hurt his feelings were, and pecked his cheek before returning to his clothes.  

“See,” Yugi muttered, still embarrassed as he fumbled with his belt, “I didn’t think so. Goes both ways, you know, that you only wanted to sleep with me. But I’m not that upset about it, either. I’d like to stay friends, though,” and Atem would like to fuck him again. Properly, and in bed. And he will. This wasn't over.

But, oblivious, Yugi took Atem’s hand and hopped off the altar.

Straightened his clothes.

Smiled at Atem and Atem returned his smile, squeezed his hand and led them out of the temple. He had little to say, so he just walked along Yugi and listened to him have problems with controlling his verbal output. His hand was warm (and still sticky, much to Atem's triumph), and he liked to walk so close that their shoulders brushed and his clean scent was there with every breath Atem took.

“I… miss _him_. That’s why.”

Why what? Why he fucked a _god_ and started an affair in some rundown backwater hellhole of a town, or why he thought he had the right to end it?

Atem supposed it didn’t matter, so he said “do I remind you of your Yami?” to let a bit of venom out, before his lazy afterglow gave way to a tantrum he could already taste.

But Yugi stopped in his tracks - stopped breathing and functioning until Atem shook him back to life – and looked more hurt and vulnerable than Atem had ever seen him.

And Atem didn’t want to see him. Not like this.

So he took Yugi by the arms and pressed his slight body into his chest so that his face was in his shoulder where Atem wouldn’t have to watch it, and held him tight.

“Hush,” he said, and hoped Yugi wouldn’t cry. “I won’t ask again.”

A careless arm wrapped around Atem’s waist. Yugi mashed his cheek against him and muttered a half-hearted “promise? That you’ll stop trying to find out?”

Atem didn’t remember actively caring, so he promised.

He swore to it when Yugi didn’t believe him.

“It’s difficult not to ask what kind of person made a little thing like you pick a fight with Anubis. God of the dead, guardian of the gates to afterlife. And you’re what, five feet tall and good at board games? Of all Gods, why Anubis? Why not Seshat?

“Which one’s that?”

“Writing and measurement,” Atem told him sternly. “You make a shit priest.”

Yugi snorted.

An affectionate squeeze later he was peeling himself out of Atem’s embrace.

“We should get back,” he said and wiped his face, “your guards must be worried.”

“My guards, ha! Priest Seto has up to two aneurysms for every minute he does not know exactly where I am.”

But when Atem tried to hold his hand again, Yugi pretended not to notice and casually slipped through his fingers.

  

9.

It was Seto who greeted them by the back gates, not a hair out of place but with bags under eyes as if he had a nightmare (about experiencing emotions, no doubt.)

Seto frowned when he recognized them, and eyed Yugi with… well, with eyes. Emotions ran deep in Seto, but Seto ran from them way faster, and whatever he eyed in Atem’s companion he kept to himself.

Atem snorted, and his tall priest just greeted him, curt and stoic.

“You appear troubled. Has my little adventure upset you?” Atem teased, and yes! there it was, a glimmer of Seto’s maternal need to lecture him, except of course he wouldn’t, not anymore, so instead he nodded and picked out his words.

“If it pleases my king, a moment in private?”

And a moment in private he shall have.

He expected Yugi to find his place difficult and not catch on that it was proper etiquette for him to scurry away.

“Oh, right!” he said when he noticed two sets of eyes staring at him. “Okay, bye. Your majesty. And thanks for handling it so well.”

Atem was absolutely _not_ handling it well. He was not handling Yugi’s agreement with himself (and himself only, because Atem agreed to no such thing) to stay just friends, well, unwell, or in any capacity. He was not handling it a _t all._ And when Atem will have sufficient time to brood over it, even less of the unwell handling of it shall follow.

Nice town the lord had there, would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

But Yugi winked at them both before he fled, and Atem was pacified for a time.

 And there was smoke coming out of Seto’s ears, Atem was sure of it, so how could he brood? 

“Well, walk with me. What is it?”

“A very sensitive matter, my pharaoh,” Seto said, unyielding. 

“Very well. I have one of my own, but it, too, will wait.” Atem rubbed his fingers against one another, probing for dirt and grease, and surely he found it there. He felt it, too, on the backs of his legs and in his hair, the oil and stench of the town, and it itched just under his rough robe, but it wasn’t appropriate for someone of his stature to just scratch himself and shed his rags, so he endured. He added, “after a bath,” and Seto only nodded and wished him a good time.

“Is it urgent?”

“I would say it is, my pharaoh.”

“How urgent?”

“I cannot contest my pharaoh’s priorities,” he said, and stopped at the threshold of Atem’s doors which the guards had opened for him.

"Oh, just tell me," Atem huffed, frustrated. "I spent my evening getting fucked against a wall. And then dumped. Did you see that little shit _smiling_? He thinks he can just walk away-" Atem took a calming breath, cracked his knuckles with one hand and pressed his lips into a thin line. "You did not hear that."

Seto nodded and unheard everything. 

He stood there, waiting for royal dismissal or perhaps even an appointment for a later time, if Atem was generous, and Atem stood there, too, with his back to his friend, and sensed somewhere inside his heart that something irreparable had occurred.

It was dread. Looming and inevitable.

His encounter with the Thief had unsettled his nerves, he told himself and pretended it was true.

And so he balanced himself on the balls of his feet and considered bravery.

“Come in,” was his order.

Seto wasn’t expecting it, and neither was Atem. But his words hung in the air, and they could do little except watch the doors shut behind them and choose their words carefully.

Carefully, ha!

What has _care_ ever done for him?          

Miserably, in a juvenile urge to self-indulge and spite, Atem shoved his hands into his hair, behind his ears and up his temples and scratched, where he wanted, for a long while, until there was skin and blood under his fingernails. It felt excellent, to both his head and his character, to just do this unkingly thing and bask in the distressed stare Seto was giving him from beneath his low bangs.

_Hell._

Atem groaned, sighed, rolled his eyes – scratched between his shoulder-blades, too – and ripped at his commoner’s hood. He threw it at Seto’s feet and _screamed_.

“I’m wearing peasant rags! For fuck’s sake, Seto! Can’t you talk to me when I’m wearing peasant rags? Do you see my crown anywhere, or is that all you ever see when you look at me?”

There was shame in his proud posture when Seto stared at the hood at his feet. Ever so quiet, ever so stoic, Seto watched it settle on his sandals for a long minute. He said nothing, not even a half-assed apology everyone in Atem’s court was so very famous for. He just closed his eyes, exhaled slowly and bent his knees.

Atem’s hands gathered into fistfuls of robe at his sides, trembling as he watched Seto drop to the floor.

Sharp pain knocked on his kneecaps when he dropped before Seto. He grabbed him by the shoulders before the tall priest could prostrate himself further.

He shook him.

“Stop. Please, Seto. Seth. Set. Stop. Why are you doing this?”

“For what I have done wrong I beg-”

“Please! Why?”

Seto’s silence was unbearable, and Atem knew better than anyone that he could not beat Seto in a staring contest, much less one of patience, and still, he waited. He held his shoulders. He gave him time.

“Self-preservation,” was his short answer, just a breath on Seto’s lips.

“You’re a good man, Seto. The best I’ve ever known. And you’re proud. So proud. How can you kneel before me like a servant and live with yourself?”

“The empire needs a pharaoh,” he said, evasive.

“And I will trust you with my life, until the day I die!”

It exploded the best a thing could explode inside a man like Seto. It sparked a tiny fuse inside him, an emotion, or perhaps a mood, and it snared the dragon within him.

And High Priest Seto was not a man to snare if Atem wanted to walk away unscathed.

“Oh, spare me the theatrics!” he snapped like a string on a taut bow against fingers of an untested archer. “What good is your trust when you’ll stab yourself any day now with that shattered royal ego of yours, once you run out of men to hang? Until the day you die, and when is that? When that foolish bedtime story you call a curse dictates it?  All your life I’ve expected more than that from you!”

“Ah. There he is,” and indeed there he was, that self-righteous windbag.

“Do _not_ ,” he spat, “make me say more.”

“Make you? I could easier reach the top shelf in my own damn room than make you do anything!”

“Then stand on a box!”

“You took my box and said it was improper for a pharaoh to stand on one!”

“As improper as that princess tiara you wear! Get another one made if you insist on avoiding Pschent like the damn hat is on fire!”

“The Thief called it a cock-hat!”

Well, _that_ did the job of knocking the wind out of Seto’s sails. Out of Atem’s sails, too, and they both snorted and stared at each as if mutual displays of antagonism were affection for them. And they were, in a very roundabout and sociable way, as good at being friends as they were enemies.

“Well, the Thief is not wrong,” Seto noted dryly after they caught their breaths and preened. “I spied on your new friend meeting with the Thief. I suppose you spied on him, too, if you heard of that rather picturesque account of the royal crown.”

“I always thought the damn hat was sort of like an egg,” Atem said, “in a cup. No?”

“No. It’s rather phallic.”

Atem sighed a tortured sigh of a pharaoh cursed with a cock-hat and scratched his temples.

“So…”

“Would that be all, your highness?”

“You are a very difficult man,” Atem informed him.

“As is my king,” Seto ‘informed’ him right back.

Well. It wasn’t like Atem expected that a bit of banter would get Seto to shower him with heartfelt friendship declarations. He was surprised he got as far as he did, and he grinned at his tall priest in spite of ‘friendship request denied’ being written cleanly in the frowny wrinkles across Seto’s brows.

Fine. 

He'll have _two_ tantrums, then, when he'll feel up to it. 

“Very well,” he said and his fists curled in what was for now a very passive-aggressive gesture. “Tell me if Yugi meeting the Thief was your urgent matter.”

“It was.”

“Well, you’re right. I was there,” Atem said and neglected to tell him he was hiding in the closet. “I don’t think much of it. Is that all?”

“No.”

Atem picked himself off the floor and dusted his peasant robes. Seto followed, humble only to be difficult.

“What else?”

His priest swept his eyes down Atem’s commoner rags.

“I shall bring it to you. Best wear your princess tiara, my king.”

"Oh, shut up! You can wear the damn dick crown for all I care, not like you aren't tall enough or anything!"

 The room iced over once he said it, from the tips of his hair right down to the breath still in his lungs, and he knew he made a mistake then, his biggest one yet, and the room began spinning and there was an ominous hum in his ears, so loud and distracting that he barely heard Seto the first time. 

"What." 

"...you.... cousins?"

"Did Aknadin tell you."

"Did you _know_  ? Did you _know_ we were cousins, _Atem_? _"_ Seto hissed, jeering and vicious with the name he had no right to use.

"I did." 

It was a whisper, nothing more. 

Seto preened, set his jaw and shrugged his anger right off. He looked as he always looked, not a hair out of place, not a window into his turbulent soul.

Not a breath betraying his intent. 

"Will that be all for now?" he said as if Atem had ordered him to unhear his admittance. 

Atem tasted salt. His lips quivered and his eyes wouldn't close. He stared at nothing and felt very little. 

"For now."

Not even a whisper this time. Just breath. 

Seto dismissed himself. 

Atem picked himself up from the floor once more.

He wiped the dirt off his hands and knees.

Changed into his regal attire. 

Mounted the princess tiara onto his head. 

Sat on a daybed with his hands in his lap and his back straight.

He waited.  

Atem had three tantrums coming up, no friends to turn to, and a darling. 


	10. Enemies, Pt. 4

This was a good idea. 

Nothing could possibly go wrong. 

 

10.

“Do you have one?”

“Have one what?”

“A queen,” Yugi said carefully and fiddled with his own paper queen as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. And hell, it would be such a _shame_ if Atem didn’t get what Yugi meant by his pointed question. Luckily though (or perhaps not at all), Atem knew exactly what he meant.

So, naturally, he said, “what do you mean?” and basked in watching little Yugi die a thousand little embarrassed deaths.

 “Um! Um, okay. I mean. Do you have a… a _wife_.”

“A _wife_.”

“Would you stop doing that,” Yugi mumbled in a manner that probably started out as assertive.

Atem chuckled.

“I just thought – well, it would be your fault anyway, but then… your majesty, I don’t really think about it when we… I’m not sure how it works, I mean what’s proper. ‘Cause we, you and I –”

“ _You_ ,” Atem laughed through the word and rolled gracelessly onto Yugi, full weight and stray limbs and all. Because he could. Because he knew Yugi wouldn’t drop to the floor to try pray away whatever inelegant and crude demon had possessed a holy God to commit an act as heinous as behaving _improperly_. 

Because Yugi only shrugged into him when Atem used his head as a chin rest. He just settled in under him and kept fiddling with his drawing.

“You are jealous,” Atem finished.

Yugi sighed, somewhat defeated.

“Kinda. And I’d feel really bad, because, you know.”

Atem frowned into his hair. “You shouldn’t admit to your secrets so freely.”

“It’s just you, though,” Yugi said as of they’d known each other for an eternity instead of days. He caught his words too late, and added, “I shouldn’t lie to the pharaoh,” which was such a poor lie that Atem pinched him for it.

“Ow. Whatever. So queen? Wife? Wives?”

Well, why not tell him what was surely public knowledge.

Atem awoke to Ra’s gracious light kissing his face.

Atem awoke to Yugi tickling his nose awake at dawn with a drawing of a pawn and a promise of a new game.

Atem awoke to a much better day than the one before.

 And, Gods willing, it would remain a good day, no matter how bloody early it actually was for it to start.

At least he had pleasant company in his bed and grapes within his reach. It would be contrary to his good day resolutions to let either go to waste, or worse, spoil or offend one or both, and Atem still remembered being a prince and having to ask for things and being polite to people, and he could do it, because Yugi was pretty, because Yugi was his friend, and he could be polite to his company and his grapes, and all seven of his Father’s high priests, twenty of his guards, four tutors, and Mahad and Mana and Seto and-

“Are you okay?” Atem blinked and found Yugi squeezing his hand, “what is it? I know it’s not my dumb question, you’ve been out of it all morning.”

“No wives.”

Yugi stared at him sideways, all ‘tell me about your feelings instead,’ and Atem expressed his feelings for grapes by eating one, so Yugi said nothing else. “And you are right,” Atem added as an afterthought, “this is not how this works. You don’t get to be jealous.” Or difficult. Or defiant.

Yugi just propped his face in his hand as if he was neither offended nor shamed – as if he somehow knew Atem didn’t mean to offend or shame him. A gambler, Atem remembered, a people reader, though in his gut he knew it was a poor explanation of having his thoughts read. A mind reader? No. That role was reserved for traitorous sketchy high priests with dirty hair.

A stranger, then. Yugi was just a strangely familiar stranger.

“I think I get to decide how I feel. And it doesn’t matter, anyway, since I ended it and you’re so good at respecting my boundaries,” Yugi said dryly from beneath him.

 “You climbed into my bed.”

“To teach you chess.”

“To interrogate me and steal my secrets,” Atem chided. “Awkwardly. I admit, it was an excellent tactic and I could not withstand it.”

“I’m going to sell my information to Bakura,” Yugi admitted, “I’ll tell him public knowledge about your bachelorhood, and he’ll expand my vocabulary. The deal’s done, we spat on our hands and it was so gross that I can’t back out. Sorry.”

“A deal well struck. Surprise me with exciting new uses for the word ‘motherfuck’ and I’ll write him a thank-you note. After you wash your hands.”

“Hm,” Yugi wrinkled his face in deep thought. “Maybe instead you could _draw_ him a thank-you note.”

“I’ve never once thought the greatest threat to my life would be a thug who spells his name with a hieroglyph for fornication,” Atem said in genuine wonder. “I don’t even think he knows there is no ‘cock’ in Bakura. Gods,” he laughed to himself, “I thought - invaders. Glorious battles with invaders. My Father did glorious battles with invaders. Won each one. Did you know?” – Yugi shook his head – “they inflate me sometimes – don’t smile like that you peasant, I can’t smite you with righteous retribution but I’ll have you beheaded and the result is still the same.”

Yugi giggled anyway and Atem planted a kiss on top of his head – that’ll teach him – and went on. “But it’s true what they say about my Father. He never lost any battles. Glorious battles. With dignified foes.”

Yugi managed a clueless “oh” and a few stock phrases of praise and admiration without saying anything meaningful or putting his smart mouth to its titular use.

“You do know there was a war?”

“Nope. Sorry. Wasn’t here.”

“And my Father? You’re old enough, you must remember the God before me, yes?”

“I’m sorry,” said Yugi, more gentle. “I wasn’t here for any of it. Not when your Father ruled. Um… just you, and I only met you like a few days ago. But if you ask me, your lame arch nemesis doesn't define you. You’re all glorious and impressive already.”

Atem buried his glorious and impressive face in Yugi’s stabby hair and regretted his decision immediately.

“Well,” he smacked his lips. “If you ask anyone about my Father, they’d say he was Great and Just and Holy.”

“What if I asked you?”

Well, that knocked the breeze right out of his sails.

He tasted words like ‘I didn’t take you to bed to make me miserable,’ and they were bitter and angry words, and he was glad he tasted them before he had the bad sense to say them.

And Yugi had the good sense to apologize for being rude, so what was Atem to do under the pressure of such skillful interrogation tactics except shove his hands under Yugi’s body and roll them to their sides. Their bodies fit seamlessly and Yugi smelled good.

Atem reached out to steal Yugi’s paper queen for an extensive inspection.

“You want to know about my Father?” he said absently, “I’ll tell you about my Father. I’d say my Father dragged me to a shadow tomb – not temple, a tomb - when I was a bratty child, and I screamed myself to sleep for the better half of that year, and then I’d scream in my sleep, too. I still dream of the things my Father took me to see. I would say that. And also, that I loved him.”

Yugi turned in his arms to face him, all cautious and fond and interested, and Atem liked that he was interested, so he plucked the juiciest grape from the vine, appraised it between his fingers, and pressed it to Yugi’s lips.

“My Father disapproved of my bad habits,” he mused and watched Yugi’s teeth scrape over the fruit. “Very rightly so, I would think. I was a brat. I liked boys before I liked girls, you know. My tutors, my servants. My guards. I was so scared my father would find out and make me take a wife at thirteen that I refused to look at girls for a good year. Mana even offered to sleep with my handsomest guard and present the child as mine so my Father wouldn’t know. Don’t laugh. It made perfect sense at the time. She even had a guard picked out,” Atem snorted, “though I suspect she just wanted my handsome guard. But Father never cared, and when I did discover girls, he made it clear my body will become a House to a God soon, and having bastard children running around would be inappropriate behavior. I didn’t understand until he passed.”

“That he was a progressive person?”

“Ha!” the lull of memories left Atem unprepared when laughter tore through his throat and his chest quivered in aftershocks, “oh, that’s funny,” he stroked Yugi’s hair and treated him to smiles and soft looks. Yugi mouthed a ‘what’ and Atem grinned more and held him closer. “You amuse me, is all. _Progressive_. That’s a little relative, don’t you think? The entire world was my Father’s – mine now. The only rules that applied to me as a child were that of decency.”

“And you-” Yugi prompted, more curious than jealous, if not slightly frightened, and Atem was quick to soothe him.

“I only had two interests. Games and gamblers. Never had a taste for cruelty, really. Well, that isn’t entirely true,” he scratched his temple, “I terrorized Priest Seto for a good while. Made him late for his lessons, ate his breakfast, put ants in his clothes.”

Yugi was torn between disapproval and amusement. He managed “why?” before he settled on either.  

“He refused to make friends, and no one liked him. I liked him. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that, and- why am I telling you this? You’ve… said words to him, and I assume he said words back – if you caught him on a good day – so you know how he gets. And, he started it.”

Yugi settled on laughing, free and easy, just happy to hear Atem’s little secrets. Or, rather, happy with Atem’s fictitious lies.

 “Oh, did he _really_ start it?” Yugi grinned.

“He started it, I started it,” Atem waved him off, “sequence of events is but an arbitrary concept. Bottom line, it was his fault because I say so, and he got poison ivy in his shoes for it.”

“You’re terrible!”

It was the worst thing Atem thought he’d ever do to Seto, his best friend Seto and his worst enemy Priest I-expected-more-from-you Seto.

And then, suddenly, sicing two very angry geese on his friend was no longer the worst thing he’d done to him.

His bittersweet mood turned bitter.

But Yugi was still in his arms, his smile ever so sweet and soothing, and Atem clung to him for his scent and comfort.

It was a strange thing, _this_. It was common for him, to enjoy an interesting person with a good smile and a laundry list of quirks, as a curiosity, or perhaps a novelty, and even empty conversations were just good company as far as Atem was concerned.

And _this_ wasn’t a thing he could measure in kisses or minutes spent discussing the royal gardens before the business between his company’s thighs became more enticing than ten different ways to praise shrubbery.

It was the mystery, he decided and knew at once he was very wrong. Yugi wouldn’t reveal his secrets if Atem shared his own.

This would be a fool’s exchange, then. Something for nothing. A bad transaction. He should talk about the gardens, really.

“I’ll tell you a real secret,” he muttered into Yugi’s hair. “About queens.”

Atem’s Father did not take him to a shadow tomb to punish his childish impudence. That temple was full of evil, unspeakable evil, and Atem’s Father loved him more than he loved the Gods and the empire and everything in between. 

The God of ten years ago took a child of his earthly flesh to a temple of evil to beg the other gods to spare Atem from the curse he would inherit from him.

“Oh,” Yugi’s hands found their way around Atem’s shoulders and grounded him as if it was a real possibility that he’d spout wings and fly off to afterlife right then. “Maybe we can-”

“We ‘can’ nothing,” Atem chuckled, “my Father could not break it, I cannot, and what can you do? I don’t even know why. Or how. Or what the curse even is. But it started with my Father, and he passed it to me, and I will pass it to my child - and I will not do that, I refuse to do it, so if any of you lot bring up inheritance or marriage, Gods help you.”

“Shh,” Yugi cooed and squeezed his hand and listened – just listened, soft and understanding and kind.

“I am the only son. I had no blood left in this world except my own when Father passed. But I could just… make more,” he made a vague hand gesture. “Make a family. My father loved me and I know I would love my family. And the advisors all tried to convince me to marry these girls and these princesses, I must produce heirs, they all said, but if I love my unborn children would I curse them into existence just so I could forge a bond with them?”

Yugi shushed him and told him it was alright.

“No it isn’t!” he groaned into Yugi’s hair and pushed himself off his companion with renewed vigor. “Because I don’t know the answer! And it isn’t fair to make children only so they would love me because the friends who loved me can’t run from me fast enough!” he huffed in frustration and rolled off Yugi, onto his back and to face the ceiling so he could burn holes into it. “And then,” he snapped back to Yugi who was still lying on his side and watching him with patient eyes, a safe distance away should Atem chose to swat at him in his tantrum, “and then! Aknadin tells me he has a solution, and it was a good solution, and I approved of it! I still do!”

“And then?”

And then Aten couldn’t die fast enough, apparently, but Atem had no time for all that nonsense.

That’s ‘what then.’

But it was a secret Yugi was better off not knowing.

“And then my line would die with me,” he said instead and imagined ways he could destroy that ceiling. “And the curse would die with me. I wanted to at least make my reign memorable, since I would leave nothing behind except my reign and my name.”

It was a soft gasp and Atem would’ve missed it if he wasn’t listening for false condolences, but Yugi was honest, as he always was, and his gasp was that of remorse, not just empathy.

“I’m sorry,” he heard a faint whisper and caught movement out of the corner of his eye. Yugi had curled into himself and watched him, for once not chatty, but quiet and sad. “Maybe it would break after a few generations?”

“A few,” Atem parroted. “I would not want even a few generations cursed for something they did not do – whatever that is.”

“Doesn’t someone know?”

“The Thief,” Atem sighed, sat up, and at once began working a kink out of his neck. “He sold his soul for it, so he would know.”

“So maybe,” there was another set of hands on Atem’s back, about as unskilled as Atem’s hands were, but he was grateful for them all the same, “maybe just a generation until Bakura, er, dies?”

“Wouldn’t that be mercy,” Atem half-smiled and decided against spearing Yugi the bitter details. “Ninety-nine.”

“What?”

“The curse is true for ninety-nine lifetimes.”

Yugi said “huh” and patted Atem’s hair. “Oddly specific. Say. That’s like, what, 3,000 years? Or five thousand? Not sure about life expectancy…um.”

Atem didn’t splutter, but he came close. “Seriously?” he droned, well below his usual standard for casualty, which was drilled into him to still be quite formal, “could I get a bit of sympathy here?”

Yugi patted his hair again and pressed his forehead into Atem’s shoulder.

“You _know_ I sympathize,” he muttered, his breath hot against Atem’s skin. “And I think I’m starting to understand what’s going on here, so I’d like to help you, if you let me.”

“Help me how?” Atem sighed, “I know exactly where my fate is taking me. I accept it. I just wish I could know why and when and how. You, though,” he laughed dryly, “are a hazard. What are you doing, do you even know? With your games, and your gods, and your… your special friends.”

Yugi’s eyes narrowed and his hands began to retreat. It was if that blasted Yami was there in his chambers, in his _bed_ – as if he was there all along and had sprung from behind the drapery to police them once Atem as much as mentioned him in passing.

“That’s fine,” Yugi told him, his lips tight, “if you don’t want my help, it’s okay. I’m… uh… hungry, so I think I’ll go get some breakfast now.”

Atem caught him by the wrist.

“But I thought we were _sharing_ about _wives_. And oh,” Atem murmured, nasty, “I do believe it’s your turn.”

The gears behind those strange eyes turned a full rotation while Yugi considered his options - considered _Atem_ \-  and of all the moves and traps he could have laid, he chose instead to hover just beyond the bed and be unreadable.

“Why do you do this?” Yugi said, and his voice didn’t tremble.

It should tremble.

He shouldn’t be this sure about knowing Atem's hand. 

Atem licked his lips, cat-like and calculated. Squared his shoulders. Withheld his reply. Glared.

He expected Yugi to run. Stutter. Throw a fit - anything, really. But Yugi didn’t tuck his chin to his chest or shrink into himself like he did before Thief. He was afraid of the Thief. He was not afraid of Atem. His eyes screamed in anger and disappointment and loss, but he was not afraid of Atem. 

 Atem’s fist curled and his teeth began to hurt. “What,” he purred, “is your Yami kinder to you? Is that all it takes, or does he fuck you better?”

“I don’t remember if he fucks me at all!” Yugi shouted, all angry red in cheeks and lips.

Atem didn't think of it as cute, not any more. His little outbursts had a raw undertaste of tangibility to them, too real to be cute, now that Atem got used to his companion's little tells and bluffs - or maybe Yugi's aggressive enthusiasm had finally began to crack around the edges. Who even knew. Who cared. 

At once, Atem was struck with the unlikely urge to kiss away his fury and smother his anger. It would be quite redundant, considering it took him so long to rile him up so good – so angry and sincere and passionate. And Atem was lost, for a brief moment, in the idea of feeling the heat of Yugi’s angry lips and teeth, and he didn’t care for much else except his little fantasy of calming him and offering him comfort until he had to dodge a rain of badly drawn chess cards.

Well, _fine_.

He can go to hell.

...wait.

He said _what._

 

11.1  

Atem shared his grief for a short moment before his luck had even registered as luck, and even then he was reluctant to savor it, lest his joy be obvious and cruel.

Yugi heaved once, twice, his molars grinding and his forearms tight under Atem’s fingers. A moment – ten of them, twenty - passed. His breaths evened and his teeth began to chatter, as did Atem’s teeth, though he never noticed grinding them at all.

“I’m leaving,” Yugi said finally, without a single ‘um’ or ‘uh,’ and shrugged Atem off his wrists.

Yugi’s mannerisms had no precedent.

Atem released him on reflex and knew at once his reflex was correct.

He could not be a king to Yugi because Yugi refused to be handled by one, and Yugi would not keep his head for much longer if Atem chose to handle him as a king would.

He should’ve known.

He should’ve never lost his temper, either, but the delicious information he gleaned was almost worth it. Still, he didn’t want the damage to last.

“You must ask to be dismissed,” Atem said evenly and meant only to educate.

Yugi caught his civil tone, and his eyes softened, of only a little.

“I don’t want to ask.”

“And I don’t want to dismiss you. Still, you will ask.”

Yugi set his jaw but withheld further arguments. Atem’s attitude confused him. Good.

Finally, he conceded. “You majesty,” he said, “can I leave?”and had the good sense to keep his sass off his tone.  

Atem sighed, scratched his brow. Preened. Slid along the silk sheets and off the bed.

“You may. I will walk you out.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Yugi said, “your majesty.” It had a bite to it.

“You shouted,” Atem told him, his voice still very even and calm. “The guards heard. They must have precedent, else they will storm my rooms when you do it again.”

It was all Atem said to him.

But Yugi knew Atem knew. He knew what Atem had heard. And Atem knew Yugi knew that Atem knew.

And Atem wouldn’t _ask_.

It was as if he couldn’t believe Atem had it in him to withhold his prying questions.

He looked around. Looked at the cards he threw. Swiped his purple irises down the disappointing length of Atem’s person. He looked for tells. _‘Is this a trick?’_ his eyes screamed, _‘you can’t mean it. Please tell me you mean it.’_ And, through some sort of divine intervention, Atem really did mean to be kind, so Yugi found no tells.

“Come,” Atem said when his disastrous companion was satisfied with his inspection. They would do this the ceremonial way, Atem decided. Yugi might as well get used to facing people with _manners_.

So he placed a courteous hand on his upper back, respectful and firm. It hovered over the pharaoh’s old robe for a moment, to give his companion time to come to terms with the blessed fact that he was about to be touched by a god. Touch never meant very much to Yugi, bit it was still the formal manner, and Atem bid his time anyway for the sake of posterity.

He gave Yugi a slight push when it was time them to get walking.

Yugi fumbled when Atem took his right flank, didn’t quite understand he was meant to nod when Atem patted his shoulder with his other hand and set the course. He feet didn’t match Atem’s stride, and his mood was still somewhere between angry and apprehensive, yet Atem walked him as he would walk a graceful foreign princess or a respected friend.

Yugi seemed to understand the weight of being formally escorted.

And, for maybe ten steps in total, Yugi was a poised and well-mannered consort worthy of Atem’s company.

“Do I, like, get the door?”

Ten precious and civil steps. They will write songs of this glorious achievement.

“Yes,” Atem rolled his eyes. “You, like, get the door.”

“Oh, come on! What the hell!-”

“Get back to the room.”

“No! I’m leav-”

“Turn around,” Atem’s words were hissing and quick. “Go back. Now.”

“I can’t see!”

His entire frame trembled and his eyes glossed over, unblinking and stunned. He went limp in Atem’s arms like a fragile damsel cultured into fainting at violence because some weak men preferred their women weaker.

But Yugi didn’t faint. He only stared, unblinking, dissociated, small.

Atem shoved him back. Locked the door. Cowed him to the veranda and over the ledge. Waved the garden patrol over. Reported the incident.

He went through the motions with Yugi clutching his side, a solid and sticky weight in the morning heat, but his warmth was grounding and Atem was glad for every second of it until Yugi found his words.

“Hey,” he whispered and tugged at Atem’s clothes. “Hey. Hey, pharaoh. What did you _do_.”

Right. That. 

“The prisoner?” he demanded of the guards.

The Thief could not manage to steal his prisoner.

 “Oh,” Yugi whispered. “Oh.”

Atem patted his side and shushed him, careful to keep him out of the path of hectic patrol.

“You have to give him back,” Yugi managed, his voice still lost to him. “Or Bakura will do it again.”

“You are safe,” Atem reassured him and rubbed soothing circles into his back. “And your friend is safe. We are going home soon. It will be alright.”

“Will you give him back?”

“No, dear. Would you like to see him?”

When terror melted through the webs of his pale fingers and down the straps of his beggar sandals, when a clever spark returned to his unsettling dark eyes and lit them up with the barest bones of his usual zeal, when the pharaoh had ran out of things to offer him, all Yugi wanted from Atem was to be left alone.

 

11.2

Yugi grounded Atem, in more ways than one.

Perhaps Atem was meant to look at him, see his own face on a kinder person, and mirror him on instinct. Perhaps his worry for Yugi was meant to snuff the gambler out of Atem. It was a likely possibility that Atem was meant to look at Yugi’s reckless gambles and sacrifices and realize both of them were here to learn a healthy lesson about self-preservation.

But Yugi was no longer there to remind Atem of such things.

Atem went back to his guest rooms with the dead guards just outside within five minutes of being alone.

The sixth minute brought about his bad mood.

The seventh returned with his pettiness.

Someone (Seto) knocked twice (how generous of Seto) and asked for audience (with Seto’s voice).

Of course, what Seto really meant to say was _‘what in the name of all Gods taller than you, which is all of them, are you doing back here?’_ but instead he went with a classic _'hello.'_

“Who dares?”

“High Priest Seto,” declared High Priest Seto.

“A Tall what? Never heard of you. Go away.”

Atem had better things to do than listen to his advice. Such as worry and make poor decisions on his own merit.

Yugi’s stupid paper chess still lay scattered on the empty side of the bed, along with bare grape vines and cushions. Atem toyed with the useless king piece and got charcoal all over his fingers.

‘ _The queen,’_ Yugi had told him, _‘or it’s called the advisor in some languages - that’s the power person behind the king because it makes all the decisions, that’s why it’s so much stronger than the king piece. It’s just a game, calm down, everything I say is very profound because I’m such a smartass, and also I am short and stupid and useless. Wife? Wife? Wife? Wife?’_

Atem massaged the bridge of his nose.

Two could play this game.

And Atem was one, though he wasn’t entirely sure which of Bakura, Seto, or Yugi was even his opponent.

Another knock. Ten of them, and loud.

“Barge in,” he called, “I dare you.”

Seto dared.

Atem was grateful that he did.

Silence between them was their argument.

Glares and pursed lips were their threats.

And oh, wasn’t Atem just so tired of this.

“You reap what you sow,” Seto informed him when the solidarity of a futon that wasn’t his was Atem’s last comfort and he collapsed into it in defeat.

“I am the Pharaoh, not a farmer,” he heard himself whisper, but there wasn’t much oil left to throw into his own fire.

His highest priest exhaled, fumbled with his fancy hat until it came clean off, and threaded his fingers through his brown hair, though Atem only saw the vague motion out of the corner of his eye - so interesting he found a cushion on this fantastic new daybed will take with him to the capital.

“Release the boy.”

“I will not.”

Seto hovered over him, bursting at the seams with pointed silences and meaning, but all he really did was serve Atem well in blocking out the morning light. Standing there between Atem and a window, being all tall and reasonable – he even cast shade. Atem stole a peek, and yes indeed, there was a halo of sunlight around his priest. It framed him in golden dust and specks of cooling ash, because even Seto’s gold was cold and icy.

“Move.”

It was a demand born out of being a shit servant, because apparently serving as a canopy had tired out Seto’s patience.

“Rephrase that, priest.”

But Seto was unbothered, and his whole demeanor was unrelenting and challenging and hard. And Atem would meet his cold ash with fire, if he had any left in him.

“Move out of my way.”

So Atem scooted half-heartedly and Seto sat.

“Move on,” his priest ground his teeth as if conversing was akin to torture. “Whatever beast is eating at you, look what it’s done to you. And do spare me demands for elaboration, I am too busy running the empire in your stead to waste time on these tiring little talks.”

How tiring indeed. Seto had managed four complete sentences, he must be practically exhausted.

“I don’t need this right now.”

Seto looked like he’d like to tell him precisely what he needed and in which orifice, but he held his tongue and opted for silence except a curt “suit yourself.”

An apology was bitter on the tip of Atem’s tongue. It kept him awake all night and his attention wandered to it whenever he let his thoughts stray. But, after a healthy dose of silent treatment, his apology was pathetic.

 “I admit I was in the wrong about… withholding information.”

Seto stared down at him, snared and squarely insulted.

“I am touched.”

“And I am-” but Seto pursed his lips and interrupted him.

“You are escalating. You are vicious. Shall we get to the point, then?”

“I am,” Atem scratched his brow just beneath his crown until his hand sort of slid over his eyes and he found comfort in blindness. “You’re right.”

“Free the boy. Hell, free them both.”

Atem said nothing and imagined peace.

“He murdered your _men_ , Atem. Give him his damn toy back.”

“No.”

It was a short word and Atem was glad to have his vision obstructed because something had changed in the room, then. It was in the way the sunshine chilled instead of heated, the way dust became dry and sandy and its gold color lost its taste. 

There was a dip in his seat, and then the only extra weight left on his futon was the one on his heart.

“Do you still love your people, at least?”

Seto must have stopped in the doorway to make his quarry, so distant was his voice, and Atem didn’t even have a good answer, so he said “isn’t that a loaded question,” and Seto left him without another word.

It wasn’t until the afternoon when the dead were handed to the morticians and the army was set to leave that the guards thought to mention to Atem the last anyone had seen of Yugi was hours ago when the little pest had snuck out of the guest manor and never returned.

Yugi wasn’t in his rooms.

He wasn’t in Atem’s rooms.

Not in the kitchens or in the gardens. Not in the bath house or the main house. Not in the cupboard. Not under the rug.

???????

 


	11. Enemies, Pt. 5

 

 13.

It occurred to Atem under the punishing scorch of Ra’s bright fury that he could always forgo the trade altogether and leave Yugi to a stupid fate of his own making.

It occurred to him that sky was blue, and sand was yellow, and grass was also yellow most of the seasons. It occurred to him that his moods could turn on a dime, and that some prophesies were self-fulfilling.  

Atem was in habit of ignoring many of the things that occurred to him (most of them being Aknadin and common sense), but the precision of Yugi’s blasted gamble had left him apprehensive and a little terrified. Of both of them. Of what formidable force they could become together. If Atem didn’t forgo the trade and leave Yugi to a stupid fate of his own making.

That one fate in which Yugi had very casually waltzed into the Thief’s hands.

Thief’s dirty, _untouchable_ hands.    

Hands that could _hurt_ him, and _touch_ him, and touch him in places he wouldn’t let Atem touch him because of his touching loyalty to some dead man, and _oh Ra_ and his punishing bright fury and everything else, _of course_ Atem would trade!

Common sense told him Yugi was nothing but a peasant with a great personality and some truly impressive hair. Common sense told him such people were replaceable to someone in Atem’s position.  Common sense said, and quote, _‘get a fucking mirror and touch your naughty bits - there’s your Yugi.’_

Well. 

Common sense did sometimes have a good handle of things, so Atem choose to only ignore the first two of its suggestions.

Common sense also told him to stay the fuck away from Seto.

But to hell with that.

He should really make-do with the other one, though. The darling. Ryo was a pretty thing in possession of a healthily docile temperament Yugi didn’t have and Atem suspected never will.

Common sense favored Ryo.

Right. His decisions would be all very clinical and dry if he trusted his common sense as a source of sound council.

Ryo rode at Atem’s side without complaint, meek and complicit in the arms of a guard who gripped him tighter than necessary as petty vengeance, as if making the Thief’s pet uncomfortable would somehow avenge his fancy-bearded slain comrades.

But chipped rocks under marching hooves kept Ryo’s attention as he pointedly refused to converse - and Atem found himself too bored to pay him any regard.

Bored, and worried.

It gnawed at his brain and scraped its evil fingers over his festering heart. The evil. The worry. The inevitability of treachery to come.

And anyway, how does one five-foot-nothing fake priest even walk up to Thief King Bakura in sound mind? And, what, offers up a trade? Just like that?

_‘Hi there, my name is Yugi! I heard you had an opening in the hostage department of your thieving enterprise. Are you hiring?’_

With some ‘um’ and ‘uh’ at random intervals, it was probably exactly what Yugi told the Thief.

Atem rubbed the bridge of his nose.

He wasn’t even mad. He just wanted his Yugi back, safe and chatting through cracks in the silence.

And Atem _would_ get him back.

Everything else was about to go to hell. He could see it now. He’d known since morning. The ominous and nameless _thing_ that had hung by its last threads for two days had broken off now, at last, and the proverbial manure was about to hit the proverbial fanning servant. But at least he would get Yugi back before that. 

Frankly though, Atem couldn’t wait to get rid of Ryo.

It had been a short and uneventful acquaintance. Disappointing, to say the least. Atem could’ve taken Bakura’s red coat for prisoner, and he suspected his interaction with the coat would’ve been about the same. 

He should take pleasure in Ryo’s humility. He should, but he didn’t, and that alone said everything about Atem’s preferences in company.

Worse, Atem’s actual preferred company rode at Atem’s other side and offered even less conversation than Ryo (who communicated exclusively by existing in the backdrop) except the occasional snort and nicker of Seto’s silver mount, because even the horses found the silence too strenuous.

It apparently mattered not to Seto that Atem had decided to return the Thief’s toy after all. 

As was Seto’s way of things, he supposed.

It mattered not to Seto when he was inserted into every part of Atem’s routine, blatantly and without either of them really wanting each other’s company when it came to studying strategy and, or running into each other in the gardens, or the training grounds, or around the corners, because even the corners they both preferred were apparently a shared interest.

Seto had a bad habit of keeping to himself back then, too.  And, eventually, Atem’s unrequited demands for attention evolved into jeers, and even then all he’d get out of His Vertical Highness Seto were curt regards in public and windy lectures when they thought they were alone.

For a while, it was as if Atem (prince Atem, future king Atem, God in the flesh Atem) was only an a minor annoyance in the way of Seto’s true purpose, which was to soak up a rare learning opportunity worlds above his social position until it dried out. It was as if it was a real threat that Atem’s Father would eventually get bored of Seto’s tall and predictable stride down the library corridors and throw him back to the slums whence he came from. As if Atem would ever let that happen. It took a while for Seto to understand that he had a friend.

They studied military formations and loyalties of city lords, but these were not the lessons they learned. The two of them learned to be family. They were family through silence and righteous fury. Family, when they could scrape enough patience to tolerate each other’s company. When Seto was brutal in the way he occasionally slaughtered Atem at senet. When Atem gloated at Seto’s losses in good humor.

Always family, family through something stronger than blood.

Broody and stubborn family.

Now, Atem had a better chance of earning forgiveness from Seto’s horse.  Not that apologies came easy for him, and he’d just mutter something about cousins and only make the matter worse. It wasn’t even about being cousins. Atem would give away half of his kingdom for things to be as simple as ‘cousins.’ The Lower half, though.  It was all jungle and bugs anyway, and Atem was one hell of a haggler.

Not that it mattered.

Atem knew Seto’s brooding face. It was indistinguishable from his usual resting bitchface except several subtleties in the bitchiness area of his bitchy forehead. It was how Atem knew Seto wasn’t still brooding over their fight. The first fight or the second fight. Or the one before that, or all of them.  

Instead, Seto was calm.

His serenity infected everyone around him. An hour into the march to what was left of the stone mason shack town, and Atem had already begun to share Seto’s nihilism.

It was the curse, Atem decided.

Not _his_ curse, but the one about unlucky hair colors. Ryo’s curls were whiter than bones and salt and his eyes as green as a cobra’s belly: beautiful, but so very precarious. The leering looks Atem’s guards had sent the darling were as full of lust as they were of superstition.

And what else was a pharaoh to do, if not to think of old wives’ tales when the silence had him nearly convinced he’d gone deaf if it wasn’t for the horses?

Seto’s horse snorted. It spooked Ryo’s horse, and Ryo shrank into his guard. The guard shoved him back to his side of the horse. This treatment of its front end made their horse unhappy, and it neighed, alerting the other horses of its displeasure. The brown horse with short mane behind it snorted in agreement and clip-clopped about horse rights, but two white stallions in the front found themselves disapproving of the pair’s rebellion against authority and shitted in protest.

…Atem blinked slowly and shook his head clear.

They were nearing it now. The drop site. The place Theif King had helpfully illustrated as a pickaxe and a tent.

The stone mason shack town.

Or, rather, what was left of it after Atem had ordered the supply bridge cut to trap the bandits with the masons, back when Yugi was an exciting new omen with strange boxes and eyes, and Seto still said words that had meant something.

Bakura was unsubtle about dragging Atem along into that particular pit of shame.

It didn’t escape Atem, the convenient barrenness of the deserted bathing shore where he stole glimpses of Yugi’s body and made a friend out of him - and had the privilege of doing this only because rock-chipping peasants weren’t littering the shore with their dusty bodies.

Atem knew then that the bandits had probably murdered the masons for whatever supplies they had left.

He knew it _had_ happened when he saw the beach abandoned, and he knew it _would_ happen when he ordered the bridge cut.

It had class to it, he supposed, in a cruel and horrible sort of way - trading companions at a place Atem and Bakura had both decimated out of nothing but sheer spite for each other.

It should make things easier for Seto’s consciousness, at least. Atem would be damned if his last act wasn’t that of familial accommodation.

Almost there.

From the corner of his eye, Atem noticed Ryo trying to wipe sweat off his face. He should really have a hood and Atem should’ve seen that he had gotten one. His white face and hands were already flustered and reddish, early signs of oncoming sunburn, but his army had almost reached the site and he figured Ryo could suck it up for a bit more.

It was the scab on Ryo’s pale cheek that worried him. Ryo tore it open in poor effort to rub his face dry, and now picking at it made it worse than it really was.

It was just a scratch. It will heal scarless and Ryo would remain pretty, with or without it, but it worried Atem. It worried him on a subconscious level along with the dark thing he let fester in the forgotten corner of his soul. He worried less over returning the Thief’s darling as damaged goods than he worried about returning to the capital as a man who would raise his hand unprovoked.

Return, ha. Right.  

The shack town would seem like an obvious trap to most - well, to anyone who hadn’t the pleasure of being Bakura’s favorite stalking obsession for years. Not quite His Thiefly Majesty’s style. Nowhere nearly as dramatic as making good on that one threat he made when he said he’d revive an unusually large God strong enough to lift one of the great pyramids and crush Atem with it (the pyramid). Or the one about unearthing a million snakes, weaving a large rope out of them, and using it to pull the capital city into the Nile.

Ryo had said, after he wiped the blood from where Atem’s ring had cut him, after he had his fill of laughing unkindly, that Bakura would likely just trade Yugi, ignore Atem, and carry on with the bigger picture. Atem thought to ask Ryo why _. ‘Because I told him that if he just carries on doing what he’s doing, he’ll succeed.’_ To that, apparently, Bakura had said something along the lines of _‘hell fucking yes.’_

It wasn’t Bakura that worried Atem.

He eyed Seto as his priest dismounted with elegance reserved for white linen of royal sails. He snapped at the straps of his dia dhank and did not even wince when the noble shine of gold glared over his eye, and his forehead, and the combed crown of his hair.

Atem dropped to the ground after him and winced once his feet touched the sand.

Death had visited this place.

And where there was death, there were hungry shadows.

He smelled the lightning and darkness across the rift, over the stench of mellowing flesh in the mid-day heat from the pit where the thieves had thrown the bodies. He smelled their anguish and aimless fury.

The guards seemed weary, but what did it matter? They were not coming across, not with the bridge pikes unearthed and the ropes severed. The only passage left into town was the narrow ledge down the side of the cliff, half-man wide and treacherous about its footing, with sky above it and a pit full of dead bodies beneath.

How underwhelming would his ending be if even one of them were to fall? If Ryo fell, the Thief would kill Yugi. If Atem fell, well, afterlife had made its welcome known long ago. And he would not live with himself without Seto.

He thought to caution care.

He didn’t. 

He helped Ryo down and avoided Seto’s eyes. He had doubts about Ryo climbing the ledge, and really, what the hell was the Thief thinking? This was no place for Ryo. His place was in a harem somewhere, safe and pretty and fed. But Ryo climbed, barefoot and wild, with sand under his fingernails and sweat over his brow, brave and determined.

Atem had once discounted Yugi in the same manner, too.

Perhaps Ryo had his own story, after all. Perhaps not for long if he put his foot there! Atem caught him by the arm and pulled him back. Ryo squeaked a little. Sniffled. Looked ahead instead of down. He kept inching forward.

Would Seto catch Atem if he fell?

It hurt him that he didn’t know.

He didn’t want to think of this.

It was late mid-day. Hot. Dry. Heavy on the eyelids and tiring for the brain. There were sands and rocks and shadows.

Their shadows.

The shadows they cast were long and blacker than soot, and they stretched all the way down to the pit where the dead rotted. It was a terrible irony, he always thought, for monsters to fester in one part of the soul that could never be fully discarded for as long as it pleased Ra to create light.

Gods cast no shadows. But their human vessels cast as much shade as common humans did, and perhaps it was meant to humble pharaohs like him and before him, to remind him of the dark imprint he would leave on this world regardless of his titles. And, true to its purpose, his shadow would always find ways to reminded him of its existence, even in the humblest of moments when eyes looked to feet and found darkness walking in his tracks.

Shadows were best visible in the brightest light, Mahad had philosophized once. Most unhelpful of him.

Kalim had made a suggestion once, and Mahad seconded it, that it was perhaps more practical to leave shadow monsters attached to the souls they corrupted, and just let Anubis deal with the mess in the afterlife.

Would sure save the empire a pretty penny on carving up stacks upon stacks of unreasonably large stone tablets.

It was Seto who said that ripping soul monsters out with his Rod was a kindness to the damned, even if they died for it.

Atem knew it would be an unwelcome kindness to the shadows of this place. He shrugged, if only to appreciate the secure weight of the dia dhank against his arm.

But there were matters far more important than the shadows of this ghost town.

Yugi, for example. Mostly just Yugi.

And he knew where the Thief had taken him the moment his feet found solid ground. Yugi was surrounded by his friends, the darling to the shadows that he was.

Through the field of shacks and over the blood on the ground. At an airy pile of stones and steps and columns that must’ve served as the town’s temple, because Gods must have their tribute either way.  There, between the pillars and parched greenery, the shadows lurked.

Yugi would come back to him.

Unharmed, or otherwise.

Atem would carry the weight of whatever happened to him. Hell, he’d carry him, if he must.

 _Oh_.

Oh no.

The Thief could have… with his… oh, oh _no_.

It slammed into him and crushed the breath out of his lungs, the weight of it all. The weight of unmanaged expectations.

What if… _dead_.

Or… _not dead_ and... Would it be worse?

What if-

Atem forced air down his throat and straightened his shoulders. He let the weight roll off him like water and blinked his face into an appropriate expression. Made his cape billow just right as he walked, firm, regal, and displeased.

The Thief sat perched on what looked like an altar, with a knee resting against his chest, his posture decadent and demanding.

He was toying with a golden thing between his fingers, a necklace or a bracelet, something shiny and expensive that he most certainly did not earn. There was idle peace in his scarred face, one that reminded Atem that Bakura still could be quite human when he had no deities to impress with his grand attempts at retribution.

And next to him, in his shadow, Yugi sat.  

He was… he was alright. He looked fine. Unhappy, but unharmed. The Thief didn’t seem to care about him at all.

…until he heard Atem’s party approach.

Once he spotted them, it was of course time for Bakura to pump his chest and cackle and gush testosterone.  

This damn Thief.

Bakura grinned wide at him, teeth sharp and pearly, inched his grabby hands to what he had no right touching and began toying with the pigmented tips of Yugi’s hair.

Yugi didn’t seem too frightened. He sat with his shoulders slumped, legs crossed and folded under his small body, reserved and sullen. Caught the sound of the rocks crumbling under Atem’s feet. Looked up from the blood on the floor that kept his cheerless mind occupied. Blinked. Flashed a little smile.

He found Atem’s eyes first, his gaze rude and familiar, and wrinkled his face in embarrassment for a moment because he did choose to come here and Atem did choose to save him, but his stare fell back to the blood splatters soon enough. Then, his face fell once more.

So the Thief told him what happened here.

Did Yugi hate Atem for it?

Yugi only shrugged. He didn’t call out to Atem, didn’t thank him for coming, didn’t beg for his protection. But then again, what would he even say? It had been Yugi’s decision to come with the Thief, and he seemed determined to be at peace with the consequences. It was rather admirable.

He seemed at peace with Atem, too. Silent and sulking, but not hateful. Upset with the circumstances, but not angry.  

He looked unharmed, from twenty feet away and with a hood over him, except the lecherous way Bakura was threading through his hair and brushing his shoulders, staring Atem dead in the eye and licking his teeth.  

Smoke and showmanship. Nothing more. Meant only to infuriate. Even Yugi seemed more annoyed than uncomfortable. Frightened healthily – thank the Gods Yugi wasn’t entirely insane – but of death, not of petty harassment.  It was all a trick, but it did its job. Atem was seething.

Twenty feet.

Fifteen. 

Atem grit his teeth, all twenty eight of them, and marched his smiling pale-headed prisoner forward. Ryo even had a spring in his step. Ryo was short of bouncing, but only by a sliver. Ryo only wanted his Thief. His murderous, godless, despicable _thief_ , with his scars and his violence. Well. To each their own, Atem supposed.

Ryo sprinted thought the last of the distance and threw his arms around Bakura’s neck.

It was a truly happy reunion of a completely healthy couple. Atem was glad he could be of assistance in uniting these two souls.

Yugi smiled for them, because smiling was his usual manner, or perhaps he was glad his gamble had paid off and everyone’s petty debts were settled. Then, when he turned his eyes to Atem, his smile grew sad, if not tinted with disillusionment.

Atem kept his face composed.

Composed, when Yugi unfolded his legs and slid down the stone altar. The edges caught Atem’s old robe and there was a flash of thighs, but Atem could care less for his thighs, just his safety.

He remained composed when the Thief caught Yugi’s scrawny arm just as he was about to slip from his vicinity.

The Thief had Yugi, but Ryo’s face had his attention.

He eyed Ryo’s scratch at first, then traced under it with his dirty thumb. His eyes burned mad.  

Atem watched.

Atem didn’t breathe.

Meanwhile, Ryo blinked, shrugged, rubbed at his face like the precious darling that he was. He didn’t seem to care. But the Thief cared.

The Thief cared very much.

Oh, _hell_.

Bakura’s neck twisted, every scar and vain pronounced and unsettling. He was unhurried and lethal, a snake uncoiling around its lifeless pray, and Atem felt his noxious stare like a whip - in his spine, the back of his neck, piercing him and making one hell of an effort to uproot him from the earth.

The roof of his mouth tingled.

His throat was full of sand.

Bakura held Atem’s eyes, delighted and lethal. He nodded just once, teeth jagged and shiny – as if he was presenting Atem with a tribute, all _‘hey there. This one’s for you’_ – and twisted around quicker than Yugi could flinch, dragged him forth with one arm as he pulled back his other. When his fist came down on Yugi’s face, it was punishing.

A whip, or perhaps thunder. Lightning? Shadows.

Behind him, Seto exhaled a disturbed hiss.

Atem’s rings cut through the fleshy parts of his palm.

His mind was screaming.

His mind was screaming, but he remained _composed_.

He stood his ground, regal and _unimpressed_ , matching Bakura’s glare for a long, soundless moment, until Yugi’s robes finally rustled against the stone floor and he whimpered as he brought his hands to his face.

Only then did Atem begin his stride.

We walked with no haste; he offered his hand instead of kneeling. He collected his companion. He meant to lead him away and maybe get him a handkerchief to clean himself once they were far enough. He meant to act a king.  

He meant to, but instead, when he touched Yugi, his heart was home and his home was hurting.

Blood. Yugi smeared the blood around his nose, and his mouth was a mess, lip split in two places and gums bloody around his teeth. His hands were bloody, too, from trying to mop up the blood.

His hands were trembling. Their hands were trembling.

Atem shoved a handful of silk cape at him and pinched his nostrils shut. Got Yugi’s blood on his hands. Wasn’t that very fitting.

He cradled his pale face, smoothed over his hair, kissed his forehead over and over, held him close. Alive. He got him back alive. A bit of personal restraint in regards to Ryo, and Yugi would’ve been just fine.

Yugi didn’t deserve this.

Atem did.

Yugi whined, though a reassuring hand on his back was enough to soothe him and he accepted the help once he realized Atem meant well. Did Atem’s composure frighten him? His hands couldn’t quite grip anything and his shoulders shook. Atem cradled him close and fussed.

Bakura could go to hell.

Yugi apparently thought Bakura could go to hell, too, because the only thing Yugi managed aside from groaning in pain was one stunningly graceful (and bloody) middle finger aimed Thief-way direction.

Brave little thing.

The Thief could’ve easily broken his nose.                   

He did not. Atem knew better than to mistake a taunt for mercy.

A taunt, huh. For whom? Did Bakura know the true reason there were five men here instead of four or fifty four?

Hell, was there anyone who didn’t know? Didn’t suspect? Yugi. Yugi would probably be surprised, though to Atem it felt like Yugi too would join the noose of enemies around him, and point at him, and laugh at him, and gloat.

Shadows. They flocked through the temple in patches of blackness and lurked just beyond the edges of his vision where he could only catch glimpses of them because Yugi’s pain took priority.

He could feel them bite at his heart as he watched Yugi’s pain. He smelled them, tasted them, tasted salt in the water.

 _Not now, Seto,_ he begged the Gods _. Please not now._

When else, if not now when the royal guards were a rift away.

Would Seto strike from behind, with the Thief there to watch Atem’s humiliation?

He wiped Yugi’s face with the clean end of his cloak and kissed his forehead again.

Of course Seto would never do such a cowardly thing.  

He was a proud man.

He would do Atem the courtesy of facing him in his betrayal.

Atem closed his eyes.

Betrayal, huh.

He thought he would feel freer once he admitted it to himself.

Instead, his world was just as numb as it was the entire way here, except Yugi’s warmth at his side put him at ease with his numbness.

Atem could stall this out.

He could indulge in Yugi’s company for a while longer. He could pretend things were fine. He tried it, if only to savor, and it surprised him that he truly was happy in that single moment of pretending. He had Yugi, the Thief was uninterested in murder, and he had his best friend at his side.

But once Atem turned to face his sins – and he did turn promptly, because he too was a proud man – Seto had the golden wings of his dia dhank unfolded and the pain in his face was so clear that Atem could almost feel it for him. 

And what a feeling it must be, to betray his own blood. 

It stung to know that Seto didn’t even want this. He valued his Priesthood that he had built from the dirt of the slums all the way up to Atem’s personal council far more than he would ever value the crown that would not be given to him on merit. And yet here he stood, contesting it out of nothing but lack of options.

Atem had this coming.

He really did.

The shadows swarmed.

They dripped from corners like tar, seeped through the floors and rose in shapeless blurs around the five of them. So many, so angry. Their smoke spread through the temple in disembodied tendrils until their twilight blocked out the sun and all that was left of the world was black miasma and violet streaks of nightmares.

The maws and eyes among the smoky shapes were familiar. Hey had faces of knights from that night in the desert, ones that Yugi banished but never sealed. Blue knight, red knight, old knight. The beast. The hunk of metal. Furry balls.  

Across the shadow field, Seto shrugged a tendril and held his ground, ever so tall and formidable, as if the threat of shadow monsters was just dirt beneath his feet.

His blue eyes had Atem trapped as if he too was just a shadow beneath Seto’s pristine slippers. He stood frozen for a long minute until tugs at his cloak distracted him, and he looked to Yugi to find his companion’s bloody face looking at him with unease.

Would he ask Atem to stop this madness? He seemed the type. The very thought of being interrupted was embarrassing.

But Yugi didn’t. He studied Atem’s face for a long and puzzled moment, looked to Seto without an ounce of judgment or malice, took Atem’s hand into his own and stood by him as if his place was nowhere else but at Atem’s side, always.

Atem wanted to kiss him.

It was a strange thing to want among this chaos.

Shadows swarmed around Seto’s feet and nibbled at Atem’s ankles. The Thief swatted them away like flies and Ryo shied from them.

But the shadows loved Yugi. Their tendrils kissed his hands as if to lure him away, and his clutched fingers trembled around Atem’s palm. But Yugi shook his head. Shook the shadows. Squeezed Atem’s hand as if to say it was time.

And it was.

Seto gripped his Rod, knuckles white around it and his face grim and unbecoming, as if he wanted to be anywhere but there and doing anything but this. But Seto was defined by choosing reason over his wants, and this was his defining moment.  

He pointed his Rod at Atem, pinned his soul as a wager, and summoned his dragon.

Well, shit.

Atem craned his neck to look up at the thing – and up, and _up_ – and it always overwhelmed him to witness this beast fighting at his side. Facing it made his back teeth ache.

The thing was positively predatory. It was petrified wood against the backdrop of purple shadows. It was lightning and thunder and oblivion.  

The wind from its great wings chilled the spit on Atem’s lips. Why were they wet? Because he licked them after smiling for so long.

Smiling? Why was he-

Behind them, Bakura cackled. If the Thief had any reservations about this being a good time to employ his maniacal laughter (because all that transpired were two uncoiled dia dhanks and meaningful stares), his doubts were all chum for the shadows now that the dragon was out. It was laughter time, and the tart sound of it was the only voice Atem had heard in hours.

Bakura opened his arms wide and unwelcoming and laughed madly, as if to say, _‘by all means just kill each other, would you like help?’_

Atem crossed Bakura’s existence off his list of caring.

Blue-eyes, huh.

Red-eyes, then. Why not.

If Seto wanted a dragon game, then he’ll give him a dragon game.

Let there be dragons.

And thus there were dragons. They snarled at each other, both ready to blast this pitiful temple all the way to the next life. They shrieked, flexed, and posed, and though Atem knew his black hen would perish to Seto’s ridiculous white monstrosity, it would leave Blue-eyes too exhausted to deal with Atem’s next shadow.

So Atem grinned, daring an attack.

It was a joke, this.

He’d always told Seto that his greatest weakness was his obsession with this one blasted dragon. It was about time someone punished him for his lack of imagination.

Except, there was something off about Blue-eyes. Something about its eyes or its teeth pinged Atem unfamiliar.

Something was different. What?

Whatever it was, Atem could defeat it.

…two more Blue-eyes later Atem wasn’t so sure.

Seto even looked ready to summon a fourth, if his dia dhank wasn’t full.

Well, then.

Never mind.

Good day to die, he supposed.

And he was serious about it, too. He took his end in stride as he did with much of everything, and he knew this was as likely of an outcome as any when he decided to bring Seto along and let him have his shot.

Seto would make a great pharaoh.

Worthy and strong, if he ever managed to forgive himself for this. Well. Atem examined his hands. Seto had his forgiveness, at the very least.

But then it happened.

_It whispered to him._

Its murmur was as sweet as the mercy of afterlife, and so pleasantly near that Atem almost mistook it Yugi.

It leaned in and dripped honey into his ear.

It confused Atem, the melody of it; it was a soft litany of white noise that wasn’t unlike his own voice, except cold and lethal instead of livid, and it filled his head with grinding wood and wetstones and colors that were sounds and sounds that were Gods.

Earth crumbled, except not really, and if it wasn’t for Yugi’s solid weight at his side and unfocused blurs of dragons, then Atem would have fallen to his knees because in that moment there was nothing but a relentless litany of ██, ██████and ███████and he couldn’t make out a single _one_.

But the Puzzle purred, finally, after leaving him to his own thoughts for so long, and there was comfort in its greedy summons.

He could just kill Seto.

With the Puzzle. If he could break through his dragons, he could kill him. Kill him dead.

He will… he will have to kill, won’t he? If Atem wins, this is what he’ll do.

It’s what Seto set out to do, wasn’t it? With his Rod? Pull the shrieking soul out of Atem’s body and take his crown?

Atem would kill him before that.

He never wanted anything more.

He licked his lips.

Their names were clearer now through the warm haze of bloodlust. O███I█.

O█IRI█

So ‘S’ maybe?

And thus the Wheel of Fortune had blessed Atem with a God.

The tides turned.

Rather, the wind currents did – at least they ought to have, but Celestial Dragon of Osiris made no wind with His massive wings; He just parked His massive serpent body lazily and looked ready to end this tedious ordeal so He go back to the land above the skies and get back to his Godly business.

But Atem gawked, impressed and speechless, until bloodlust surged through his veins anew and he remembered what he was and whom he was dueling.

Osiris had Seto gawking, too, in his own restrained and indomitable sort of way.

Yes. That man, there, across the field of monsters – that was his Seto. Unbowed, even in defeat. Even now, with keen maws of a God trained on him, he stood proud and unbeatable. Admirable, even in his treason, because the decision he made required strength.

And Atem will kill him.

Right then.  

Never mind crushing his mind. Osiris will turn him to dust and bones.

Yes. Atem smiled. _Yes_.

…what the _hell_.

But he licked his teeth and savored the command he will utter happily, for it was quite a thing to command a God.

Atem opened his mouth, is sync with both of his godly dragon’s jaws, teeth as long as Atem’s hands and lightning brewing behind them.

He leered at Seto as his lips formed syllables.

The corners of his mouth twitched in delight.

_Yes!_

Anubis was there, just a dog among the shadows, but Atem knew his face and so he bid Seto a safe journey. 

When Osiris finally melted away, it was as suddenly as He appeared, without any disturbance in the air except Yugi’s heavy breathing and Bakura’s applause.

Red-eyes melted, too.

Atem stared at the dia dhank at his feet, disoriented, not quite sure how his weapon had ended up on the floor. He was left only with the sweet afterburn on his arm where the disk had been just a moment ago. Except, the rope burn was very real. There was blood underneath his chipped fingernails, and leather fastenings on the dhank were torn from the gold.

He… threw it.

Right after he-

No dust.

No bones.

Seto’s blue eyes were wide and piercing, and Atem could see his shock even from behind his three dragons.

_Oh, thank the gods._

Atem closed his eyes and thanked each and every one that had a hand in making him a coward.

But he lost, didn’t he?

That was alright.

His world was a sludge of haze and smoke, but his hand was warm and he remembered about Yugi. Yugi never ran from the red God, never as much as twitched in His presence. Yugi was still with him, and Atem could not recall ever being more grateful. He loosened his grip and ran his thumb over imprints of his rings in Yugi's skin, but he couldn't recall his companion trying to escape from that, either. 

Atem watched him in adoration. Fearless and handsome little devil, with his silly black queens being too strong and white bishops being lost. Yugi had played his part in this, some way and somehow, as was typical for things of such great importance,  but Atem could not believe that either Yugi or Anubis had any real hand in this disaster, because no god would dare meddle with cogs of destiny that were not already turning.  

Yugi grinned, half-apologetic and not at all disappointed with Atem's defeat. His smile read consolation, all _'oh well, that's fine,'_ as if he didn't understand that Seto would just kill Atem now. Or didn't he? Perhaps he thought Seto too would forfeit the duel. 

How silly.

He squeezed Yugi’s little hand and went to kiss him, but their lips were just a hair away when he remembered Yugi would not like that much. He sighed, ran his fingers down the soft curve of his cheek and kissed his temple instead. Atem was glad to have met him and it was a privilege to spend the last of his life with him. He just hoped Yami was a worthy man. He wished them well.

Well?

Seto’s dia dhank clanked against stone in the same manner Atem's did, straps nearly torn and dragons half-faded. 

Huh.

_Oh._

_Why?_

Because he would always be Seto's family. 

Atem’s words returned. They came surging through his mind, passionate and apologetic. He failed Seto so many times that it was hard to remember the last time he was kind or compassionate. He failed as a king and as a friend _,_ and he forgot himself so completely that it frightened his friends to try and remind him. He was sorry for all of it, everything, all of that darkness and the rot that came with it. 

He opened his mouth and tasted the relief on the tip of his tongue. He had words now and a world of things to say, and all would be alight if he managed even a single one.

But Atem _choked_.

Not on his words or a metaphorical lump in his throat, oh _no_. It was a very physical vice, smothering and raw, as if an immature shadow tendril braided itself right into his vocal cords and stole his words.

He could say nothing. 

It horrified him more than any number of dragons and Gods and prophesies of curses; it horrified him that now, when it mattered most, he could not speak at all. 

Atem stood there, with his mouth half-open and that nasty grin finally banished to the hell it came from, but his regrets were mute. 

If he spoke now he would be heard.

But he couldn't speak. He could scream in his head all he wanted, but he could not speak. 

Seto watched him.

Seto waited, expected, hoped, but nothing came.

They stared at each other for a long time, silent and at loss.

Seto gave him all the time in the world until there was nothing but regret in his eyes.

There was nothing more Seto could do for him.

Finally, he threw his Rod to the floor.

His Highest Priest quit in the same manner he did all things, between the most mundane of them to the most important. He held his head high and proud, and his cape billowed regally. There was a determined spring in his step. He was stone-faced and bitchy as he walked away, though Atem could see his pain from the subtle wrinkles around his blue eyes and the way his frown trembled around the corners. 

He could see it all. And then he could not see it, because Seto turned on his heels and turned his back and left his rod and his titles on the dirt floor of some backwater temple. 

When shadows dissipated, it was sunset.

If Atem had the strength to look, he would see every piece on the board eyeing keenly the things they wanted most.

Atem didn’t look.

But finally, he screamed.


	12. A Penalty Game

#cockhat 

 

1.

The penalty for Yugi's stunt was a mild type of arrest which consisted mainly of restraining one of his hands by way of being held. 

...they returned to the capital holding hands.

Atem turned his army around from the favorable path he meant to follow, though the north cities and around the small patch of desert between him and the capital, and marched them all straight back through the sands where the bandits hid. He itched to fight them again. He itched to fight Bakura. But there was no one, not even a sand snake for him to stomp, and so he was left clutching Yugi’s hand and seething.  

Yugi was short, and a foreigner, and both of these things made him useless for riding a horse unaided, so they returned to the capital holding hands.

Also, his little hands were freezing in the hot summer heat of the desert, so Atem took it upon himself, for Yugi’s benefit and no other reason, to hold his short hand the entire way.

“But you’re about as short as I am,” Yugi complained.

“Hn.”

"You know,” he squinted, “I got punched. By Bakura. In the face. I mean, puberty's been dodging me for like six years, but now? It’s like he injected me with his testosterone - through his _fist_. I feel manlier already. And taller.”

“Hn.”

"And I’ll get taller than you, since we’re about the same already.”

Atem forgave him his dim intellect that made him useless at judging significant height differences and continued holding his short little hand.

“One inch! At best! And it could just be your hair,” he eyed Atem’s mane with suspicion, “you know what, it does look a little longer-”

“We are not comparing hair height.”

But Yugi grinned one of his less charming grins, one with teeth that spelled mischief, and Atem knew at once Yugi would try his damnest to sneak a hair evaluation. That, and he was glad to have Atem talking again.

And there wasn’t any fault in that. Brooding and silence made for poor company.

A company Atem would enjoy for a little longer, it seemed. Yugi hadn’t made any offhand comments about wanting to do any sightseeing alone - or having to do ‘a thing over there, right now, by himself’ as Yugi would most certainly phrase it if it came to that.

When it came to it.

Atem would let him go, when it came to it.  

But not yet. Yugi’s hands had not trembled even once in his awkward attempts at making smalltalk, so at least he meant to stay for now. Atem would know. Atem held his hand the entire way.

But Yugi stole a peak at him and made a face.

“Maybe I’m being dumb,” he frowned, “maybe you actually just want some space. I could go do a thing over there right now by myself. If, uh, that would help?”

Idiots. They were idiots, both of them, but what could Atem do of his own free will when there was so little left of it?

 _Be kind._ Though he was sure it was a little late for that.

So he told him “you are not being detained" a little too quickly. They weren’t his best words and he was lucky his voice didn’t crack around them.

He half-expected Yugi to hop off their horse and scurry away right before the city gates.  It was a thought born out of Atem’s worst expectations because that was the reality of his life lately. It was a silly thought, but it scared him.

Yugi, of course, didn’t.

Yugi had more tact than that.

Well, marginally more. 

Yugi had also spent the last few minutes trying to discreetly pick fallen hairs from Atem’s robe, so there was that.

“Okay. I think that’s a ‘yes’? I have no idea. You’re very bad at communicating.” But he squeezed Atem’s fingers and promised him all the space he needed, later, because duties and throne rooms and temples and priestly things.

Which priestly things, Yugi couldn’t say, and it was as if he suddenly remembered he was supposed to pretend he was a priest, and he was about as convincing about it as Aknadin was about being loyal. It made Atem wonder why he bothered, but he didn’t particularly care as long as their hands were linked in some friendly fashion.

The gates opened.

Flowers flew. And grain. And prayers.

Cheers. Flutes.

Peasants threw themselves into the dirt at the sides of the road and offered scrappy gifts that Atem only saw out of the corner of his eye. The guards handled the offerings. They gathered some of the trinkets on his behalf, lest the peasants think their God thought their junk was unworthy. The guards permitted an occasional beggar to touch his horse. They ought to guard him against aggressive florists, too, but Yugi was on the receiving end of their colored weeds and seemed giddy and pleased about it.

Someone had managed to shove some violet cornflowers into Yugi’s free hand. Atem took note of how he smiled from ear to ear and cradled his flowers and hummed.

Flowers, then. Not gold.

Not gold or rough jewelry or food or babies.  

“Psst,” Yugi whispered, “did that guy just try to give you his baby?”

“Why, do you want it?”

Yugi spluttered and Atem smirked. The peasants roared and hooted and whistled, blessed to witness a God smiling at them, and for the first time Yugi looked at them, really looked, and saw them for a mob of lunatics that they were. Welcoming lunatics that loved their God, but their fanaticism tended to stray a little too far on the uncomfortable side for Atem to stomach on a bad day.

Yugi stomached it for him. He accepted more flowers with faint and shy grace, meek in Atem’s lap and genuine about the smiles he beamed into the crowd. He looked every bit a prince in his new clothes that still weren't quite right for him, with Atem backing him. But Yugi needed neither, just his quiet charm.

At least the crowds didn’t spook him.  

But the offerings did.

“Uh… that’s definitely a toddler. Wow.”

Atem clicked his tongue and motioned a guard over.

“Collect the children and pay for them. And you,” he nudged Yugi, whose face had already began to contort in displeasure, “you know it’s best for them. Why don’t you collect more flowers?”

His tart words were instant, and they’ve been in a race against his mind for some time. Now, his words ran faster than he could count his blessings. 

 No!

“Oh, no,” he squeezed Yugi’s hand. He squeezed his middle. He pulled him into himself. “No, not now, not with you.”

Yugi frowned but kept their hands linked.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, and Atem found a purple wildflower in his free hand. “We’re almost there, just be strong for a bit longer. There’s people watching.”

Atem snorted into his hair. It was a humorless sound and it grounded him because he was a God on his gold-plated horse in his golden jewelry with a silver prince in his lap, marching with his army through the dirty streets of the lower town and having a breakdown, and it was his ward telling him to be strong.

But how sweet of him.

“How kind.”

As streets became ornate and painted, when ‘almost there’ truly became almost there, and by the time the servants and slaves and priests bowing to him were his own, an hour had passed, and his mood worsened.

He refused the porters.

He refused Aknadin, who greeted Atem in a manner a traitor would greet a ghost. He fumbled and stuttered and consumed the time Atem absolutely did not have for him, and somewhere in that greasy and traitorous head of his there was forming a very short list of regrets, one that included either remorse for being a damned traitor (unlikely) or regret that he did not skip town (very likely).

His Eye twinkled, and Atem visualized very vividly and without omitting a single gruesome detail how he would have that Eye extracted, along with Aknadin’s head, and have it put upon a nice pike. Polished wood, perhaps, he heard cedar was in fashion. Or maybe gold. Atem would spare no expense.  

Aknadin choked on nothing and pretended to have caught a sudden case of horse shit.

“M-my most gracious –” amazing, “–something something, p-priest Seto?”

“Vacation,” Atem grunted, and Aknadin read from his mind that one more moment in his presence and it wouldn’t matter whose father and uncle Aknadin was if he was a head short. It wasn’t even a matter of posterity anymore. One more step out of line. One more petty plot against the crown. One more ‘discreet’ peak into his mind and-

Aknadin ran from him.

Good. 

His hand felt sticky between Yugi’s kind fingers, and there was sand between his toes.

A few stairs. Two more corridors.

The usual servants who made careers out of reading his moods had done away with the ceremony and inner-palace procession, and anyone in his way had to learn to dodge from his sight very fast.

“Seto’s coming back, you know,” Yugi offered. And then: “um… ow?”

Atem quickly loosened his grip and stopped his stride to bring Yugi’s wrist to his lips and kiss it in apology. He brushed some stray hairs out of his face fondly. Yugi was still here. With him. How precious.

“You are too kind,” he said and maneuvered him through the doors of the royal chambers and into the hands of his quietest dressing girls. “I’m afraid he might, I’d rather him be a deserter than headless.”

But Yugi only rolled his eyes and dodged the servants.

How dare he roll his eyes, had he learned nothing? At least he learned that the best defense against grabby girls was to hide behind the pharaoh’s skirts, which was equal parts bothersome and charming.

Atem sighed. The tempo of his stride made his mind lag, and it felt like he was still scaling the stairs and scowling at Aknadin and riding through the desert, but no – he was home. Someone – himself perhaps -  had slammed the doors behind him, his heavy wooden doors with faded stories of Ra and his chariot, and he was alone with his yellow stucco walls and endless grape platters and daybeds and the smell of lavender, all familiar and safe and his own.

And servants who knew his whims.

And Yugi.

Yugi fit in as if he belonged there, between Atem’s furniture and against the backdrop of the wall rugs.

Yugi should leave.

Before Atem took that choice away from him.

“Hm?” Yugi blinked when he caught him staring, and smiled lamely. Something about watching a pretty girl peel Atem’s clothes made Yugi mince his feet and turned his cheeks rosy.

It took some effort to reel him in, on the count of girls being around. Atem cupped his cheeks when he managed to sit him down, and brushed his temples with his thumbs. Yugi didn’t flinch when he touched the corner of his mouth tenderly where the lip was split red and healing. It must not hurt anymore. That, or Yugi trusted him.

“There was no reason for this,” he touched his finger to the cut.

Yugi shrugged and tried being subtle about rubbing his cheeks into Atem’s palms.

“Who cares? There was no reason for those guards to die. You didn’t mean it, but it’s still kinda your fault.”

The girl with easy fingers, the one who hummed sometimes as she sorted his jewelry for polishing and had a sweet voice when Atem had her sing, that one – she had almost caught Yugi by the back straps while Atem distracted him, but she hesitated when she heard Yugi’s rude words.

Yugi cheeks were warm and soft and round. He was friendly and easy and good.

He should not be here now.

“Yugi-”

Yugi beamed at him. Through the melancholy in his face, he beamed, and his chest heaved. The corners of his eyes wrinkled and his eyelashes grew wet.

“Ah, sorry!” he hummed when he saw Atem’s puzzlement and just pressed his face into his palm harder. “You never called me by my name before.”

He hadn’t?

“Yugi.” He savored it this time. It was a soft name on his lips with a pleasant click at the end. It fit well, for all it was worth, because it made as little sense as its bearer.

Yugi melted.

“It’s cute, you have an accent. I like it!”

Atem rubbed his cheek and kissed his forehead.

It was all a joke, he realized.

Yugi truly was a joke. A joke on him. There, at his fingertips, Atem had everything he could ever want – to have or to be - and he would have to let it slip between his rings as a kindness, else he would crush it and let it slip anyway, except Yugi would be dust then, because Seto had the good sense to walk away and Yugi wouldn’t.

It was cruel.

It was cruel to them both. But Yugi had been cruel too, hadn’t he? He shared the fault for letting this Good Thing happen between them. It wasn’t fair. Atem should feel guilt – half of a guilt - but instead he felt the first wisps of madness.

 “I am not angry with you,” he said after he counted only one Yugi and counting a Yugi did nothing to fix his spirits, “but I wish to be left alone for now.”

The girls dropped their chores. The one cracking Atem’s toes set his feet down, and the girls were gone, all of them.

“Huh?” Yugi’s face fell. “I’m sorry! Did I-”

“It isn’t you,” he geared up to give Yugi an explanation. “Rather, I find myself in a… foul mood.”

Yugi seemed to understand. So he nodded, somber and in thought, and began folding Atem’s cape that the girls had draped across the arm rest.

“I’ll stay with you for a bit, then.”

Well. Apparently he understood nothing.  

But how to explain it to him?

Atem allowed his shoulders to drop and he shed a few false low notes from his voice.

“Yugi. Listen to me.”

“I know,” Yugi said and set the purple silk neatly onto the daybed. He stole glances at Atem’s puzzle and dodged eye contact. “I was there, I saw… I saw _the bad_.” He frowned. “It’s okay. I’ll stay for now.”

“I will hurt you. If you stay, I’ll hurt you.”

“I…” Yugi frowned, “I really don’t think you will.”

“Don’t you understand anything? Leave!”

Atem covered his mouth once he realized he shouted.

It was indignant.

Worse, it was frantic.

So he squared his shoulders. He wiped his face blank. He preened, but he kept his fingers pressed firmly between his eyes because someone had once told him it helped with headaches. It never helped with headaches. Maybe he never did it right.

And Yugi watched him, all patient and stubborn, and the closest he got to leaving was shuffling in his seat a bit when he toed his shoes off, pulled his legs from the floor, and folded them under himself.

His tell-tale hands were balled in fists, clenched in what Atem thought must be fear or determination or something meaningful, but instead he realized Yugi was just grabby - and stealing hugs was something he had to suppress.

Overall, Yugi meant to telegraph that wasn’t going anywhere. He managed it, but he also reeked of guilt. 

“And why,” Atem mumbled from behind his hand, “do we look so guilty?”

“Wow,” Yugi mumbled right back at him, “grumpy.”

“Rude.”

“Mean. Probably ‘cause of me. But still mean.”

“What do you mean?”

“Uh, ‘cause I came here and messed up all your stuff,” Yugi admitted and looked at his hands. “I’m sorry. I really didn’t think it’d go like this.”

Atem snorted and let his body thaw into the daybed in defeat.

He looked to the ceiling like it had done him a great offence, and his words were spiteful when they came out in drawn-out slur and bile.

“You all think you’re so important, don’t you? You, the Thief. Seto,” his lip curled, “ _me_. There was some sort of injustice done to the Thief. And the Gods will tax us all to repair it. You can play all the games in the world with your bishops and your bets, but Seto still would’ve…” his voice cracked, “he… one way or another, he had to…”

His bitter words turned to salt that was rock-salt in this throat for hours until he fed it water, and Yugi’s hands were as grabby as Atem imagined. And gentle. And his shoulder was warm. And Yugi was rocking him, except it wasn’t Yugi rocking.

“He was my friend! How could he! How could I!”

“Shh.”

“And I had it coming! I had… and you!” Atem dislodged himself from Yugi and grabbed him by the arms. “You saw it! That thing in me, that vicious thing! You can guess what it is, can’t you? Take your game and run from me. I almost killed my _friend!”_

“…you’re hurting me.”

He told him he would!

Atem unclenched his fingers and smuggled bits of Yugi’s skin under his fingernails. It burned to stay close to him, and he recoiled to the back of the daybed and hoped this was enough to scare him away, because-

“It’s not a thing, you know. It’s just you.”

“What?”

“It’s you. It’s not a monster, like a snake or a dragon. Yours would be a dragon,” Yugi nodded to himself, impressed with whatever he imagined. “And it would be really cool. But it’s not. It’s literally just you.”

He sounded vaguely unimpressed, like it was an ordinary thing, a thing to be expected.

_What?_

“It’s the meanest part of you. I’ve seen stuff like it before, so I know. You let your mean shadow poison your heart, and it’s all rotten and bad now. That’s all.”

 Nonchalant and still unimpressed, Yugi measured Atem from the tips of his hair all the way down to the Puzzle, and though he looked comforting and sorry, fear dodged him, and he remained calm.  

A spark surged through Atem, or perhaps a forest fire.

“And _what_? Does that not _impress_ you enough? It doesn’t scare you?” he roared, blistering and angry, and Yugi did not expect Atem to drag him out of the daybed by the shirt and shove him through the nearest door – not the front door, oh no, that would be mercy – but squarely into his bed chamber until Atem’s knees hit the futon and Yugi landed face-first into a pile of cushions and–

“Pharaoh, sorry to tell you this,” he flipped over and glared, with pale hairs stick between his lips and cold hellfire in his eyes, “but you aren’t very scary when you cry.”

To hell with this brat.

Back to the purple hell which spawned him.

Atem forced his legs apart and crawled on top of him, crushed his ribs with his arms and buried his face into his chest.

Yugi stayed very still for a long moment. His heart raced and he didn’t breathe, fingers frozen in mid-shove and knees trembling.

Finally, beneath Atem, in a bed that wasn’t his own, with a man he did not want between his thighs - finally, Yugi was frightened. And Atem was, too.   

Yugi’s little hands - the ones Atem held the entire way home - had melted first, after an eternity of atrocities went through their heads and remained in their heads because Atem refused to act upon them. Yugi’s fingers were cautious and trembling as they found their way into Atem’s hair, and the two of them stayed motionless for an eternity longer because neither could be sure if contact would snare or appease.

Yugi ended up soothing his hair, in the end, convinced once more, wrongfully, that Atem could do him no harm. But despite his romantic convictions, he still trembled. He still feared. But he breathed.   

“Are you hiding?” he cooed when Atem would not lift his head from his soft belly.

Atem made a noise.

Yugi pulled a sheet over their heads and helped him hide.

 

2\. (visitors)

A spider crawled up his arm. As big as a grape, and meaty, not one of those thin ones with hairs for legs. Six, not eight, two torn from their sockets on one side. It crawled up his arm, and he gave it a crumb he fished out of his bed.

A servant came and plucked the spider from his skin with a rag.

He had her thrown into the dungeon for it.

No one thought to touch him after that.

 

-

Mahad came by.

Mahad sat like a wetstone at the dull edge of his bed and watched him pick grapes from a vine. Pluck, pluck, pluck. Then tink. Thud. Thud. He was aiming for the floor anyway. It was where he ought to be, too, on the floor among his grapes, but he had to pick himself off the bed to get to the floor, and he couldn’t pick up much of anything.

Mahad picked up his spirits when the grapes ran out. He went outside and came back with a handful of pebbles for him to throw.

Mahad sat at the edge of his bed again and watched pots splintering. Atem’s aim wasn’t the best, and he blamed Mahad for it.

He sent Mahad to the dungeon.

 

-

Mana returned to the palace, or perhaps the world had rotated under her feet until she was home again, and she centered herself squarely over Atem’s sullen spirit.

“Come on, Prince,” she shook him. “get up. Let’s play a game! It’s called ‘Get-Out-Of-Bed-And-Go-Rule-Something!’”

He did not like her game.

Off to the dungeon she went.

 

-

Shada took one look at him and arrested himself.

 

-

Yugi gravitated to his dinner once it was dinner time.

“You’re gonna throw it on the floor anyway,” he chewed cheese cubes and appraised Atem’s smashed pots. “Where is everyone, anyway?”

“Dungeon!”

“Oh.”

“No,” Atem told him. “You’re going to the dungeon.”

“Oh. Can I bring the food with me?”

 

-

He pardoned them all once his misery demanded company a tedious hour later.

They gathered in his chambers, all four of them because Mahad, Mana, Shada and Yugi, alphabetized – or perhaps Mahad, Shada, Mana and Yugi if he were to sort them by height - were the only ones whose company he preferred miserable but alive, and it unsettled him that the penalty he wanted for the girl who killed his spider was a little bloodier than the dungeon. It bothered him, so he smothered his rage with petty irritation and hoped she would have the good sense to leave town before he remembered her.

“Right. I abdicate,” he declared to his underwhelmed audience and accidentally bit his tongue. It bled. He didn’t care.  

“You can’t quit,” Yugi mouthed through another cheese cube, “you got a prophesy to fulfill. Or a curse. Whatever.”

Shada eyed Yugi with the attention of a guard dog trained to sniff for poison.

“Hm. Shada.”

Shada snapped upright. Atem did after all march an army through a desert to arrest him for false treason not even four days ago. Shada bowed, low and anxious, but his tensions around Yugi never quite eased.

“Tsk,” Atem smacked his lips. “The council annoyed me and I disciplined them. But not you. You came bearing news?”

“Yes, my king. From Isis.”

“Bad news,” Atem concluded.

“I left my personal affects in the dungeon should my fair pharaoh send me back.”

“Don’f shoot the meffenger,” Yugi cut in. Shada ignored him. Mana giggled. Mahad… was Mahad. 

“Proceed with your bad news.”

Shada bowed again. “This one,” he motioned to Yugi, “means to do harm. The path his majesty chose is unfavorable, Isis says. She sees nothing but crossroads, the gates to afterlife, and you, my king. Losing. I have counsel to give, if my king will hear it.”

Yugi performed a mighty swallow (a skill Atem would find very curious under circumstances not involving possible regicide) and stared, dumbfounded.

“Um. Okay, wow.”

Indeed!

“Dungeon.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Not you. Shada, dungeon.”

Shada bowed.

“Come on, he’s the messenger!”

“I don’t like his message,” Atem disagreed, “and this is favorable for you. Not because I think Isis is wrong, she never is, but because it’s poor timing for her prophesies to finally become helpful, and I am annoyed with her for it. Welcome her to the dungeon once she returns. I will keep you in my bed.”

Mahad looked like he had some wise counsel. 

“It is unwise to keep him in your bed.”

“Thank you, Mahad.”

But Yugi peered at the grave faces of the priests and saw gravity there, even in Mana. He seemed very self-aware, for how small and ridiculous he looked between their grudges and of how little he belonged among them, so he shrugged, picked up a fruit knife, and stabbed the air.

Right. Very dangerous. On with Shada’s arrest.

“Um! I have a question for Priest Shada, please?”

“Yes,” Atem reclined against the headboard and pulled a linen sheet over his head. This exposed his toes, and he kneaded them into a cushion. “Go ahead.”

“Like what kind of harm are we talking about?”

“The kind which involves a Millennium Item.”

Yugi dropped his knife and looked around for one of those, for humor. And then insight bit into him, like a bee sting, and twice as unpleasant. Atem could see it in his eyes before he mulled over it, the sourness of his idea.

 “Yes. Mahad and Se-” Atem swallowed and rephrased, “I’ve already been advised against giving him an Item, back at the temple. This is not news.”

 “Oh. Actually, I think I know what she means.”

“But you don’t have an Item. The Thief stole the Rod.”

“Right.”

 Atem blinked. This wasn’t quite what he expected.

“It it true, then? You mean me ill?”

“Well, I came to play Senet, but you kicked me out and sent me to jail. So...  I had this thought of smacking you with your Puzzle? Maybe that’s what Isis saw.”

A lie. Yugi folded his hands behind his back.

Interesting.

But decisions had to be made, and they weren't light.

“Well,” Atem surveyed the room and took note of every grape beneath Mahad’s feet, ever pottery shard, every eggshell - years old and progressively more fragile, one thinner than the next, with venom where yolk ought to be.  He didn’t much care to survey faces. “Alright. Talk to me, about how you plan to aim the Puzzle when you can’t catch a hint and get out of my way.”

Please, your majesty, reconsider! It is unwise!

“Out.”

Mana lingered, her lips chewed and her grin worried, and she looked Yugi over from head to toe and judged him from what she heard of him from the priests. Atem let her stare. Atem wanted a verdict.

Yugi beamed at her, his smile wide and welcoming, as bright and friendly as ever.

“He is very sad,” she puffed her cheeks on her way out. “I think he’s been sad for a while. Sad people do desperate things.”

It took a while for Atem to gather his thoughts from his bed, from beneath the blankets stained with charcoal paste, from the food crumbs, from feathers of the cushions he gutted and shards from things he broke. When he managed it, he realized Mana had meant Yugi. 

“Desperate, hm?”

Yugi snorted like a kettle and glared at Atem’s smashed pots.

“Fair. Now-” Atem motioned vaguely at a robe that lay abandoned on one of the dressers.

Yugi held it out for him, but he shook his head. Not that. Yugi seemed to get it then, because he only shrugged and pulled it over his clothes, and instantly Atem felt better about having him for company.

“Good. Join me.”

Yugi found the crumbs unsanitary.

“Did you really mean it? That you want to abdicate? Do you mean that you can’t do stuff like rule the country and… whatever you do?” he said and swept the sheets with his hand. It was poor effort to a meaningless task. Atem watched him struggle.

“There is no shame in mistakes, only penalties. I admit I make mistakes. But never the same one twice. Trying to rule now that I am incapable of it would be a mistake.”

Crumbs. Crumbs everywhere. A phantom crumb lodged itself into his forearm and he could not scratch it enough.

Would Yugi really come to bed with him, after he came so close to-? He would. How forgiving of him. Atem helped him climb and gave him space to settle against the headboard. They sat hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, except Yugi folded his knees neatly under himself and let Atem tuck a lock behind his ear and tap him on the nose fondly. They smiled for each other. 

“I made an important decision, and it was the wrong one. One of many,” he sighed, “And Gods stopped me. I don't expect their mercy next time I lose my temper. And you’ve seen my temper, dear.”

Yugi must have realized that Atem meant so much more than that. It was in the way his frown lingered through whatever reassurances he imagined. His fingers trembled to the first knuckle. He nodded, in the end.

“I don't think that was the worst I've seen of you," he said and bit his lip immediately, as if something in his mind didn't quite add up. "You know, now I wish I told you exactly why I'm here.”

“And I wish you told me gossip about your Yami. Why should it matter now?”

Yugi found a thread on the robe Atem made him wear and began picking at it, his chin tucked in and his eyes unfocused.

“Okay, well, I don’t remember.” He frilled the wool and inhaled generously. “And if I can’t even remember things like that, then it means I’m running out of time. I… uh, I haven’t played a move in three days, not since the bishop thing, and now with Seto... I can't decide what to do. And you know what time is costing me," he paused. "And I want to help you, but you’re so stubborn! And I can’t just choose between you two, who does that? I like you, you know. I thought I won't miss him if I just hang out with you, but I was wrong. I’m wrong about everything. I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know where he’s gone.”

It was a wondrous thing, how tight Yugi’s fingers were around that thread, and how viciously he clung to a mood that left him no room for grief. 

Atem humored it, what else could he do?

“To his death, I presume,” he said unceremoniously.

“Yeah,” Yugi deflated, “Anubis and all.”

“Why would Anubis ask for your memories of some man?”

Yugi snorted, not at all humored.

“I’ll stop bothering him if I forget, he said. And I’ll pay less of the thing most important to me if we finish the game quick. I think he just wants me to go away. It’s life and death, but it all must be very petty for a God.”

Petty for a God, ha! Atem knew of one god to whom Yugi would never again be petty, try as hard as this one frustrated God could to avoid this exact predicament.

It made him spiteful, so he composed his face and feigned sorrow.

“I will inform Anubis of your reasonable complaints,” he said. Remorsefully.

That earned him another frown.

“It’s not like you can just _go_ to Anubis.”

“Oh,” Atem sighed very sadly. “But I must. Isis said I’m dying.”

“What,” Yugi froze, “that’s not what she said-?”

“Tomorrow,” he insisted gravely and watched Yugi’s eyes grow wide and inconsolable. “I die tomorrow.”

And then he cracked up before he could even say his line about finding Yami in the afterlife and telling him all about their torrid and intensely sexual affair, and- and why would any of that make Yugi happy?

Yugi smiled at him, gentler than a breeze on bathed skin, not even slightly annoyed. He smiled and pretended he was interested in Atem’s earrings.

“I remember him laughing,” he whispered, closed his eyes and pressed their noses together. “Just like you do.”

Oh!

Yugi’s breath was warm. His breath was warm and his eyelashes brushed against Atem’s cheek. His lips were warm.

He kissed Yugi back like Yugi ought to be kissed, softer than butterfly wings on skin, lips barely touching lips, and fingertips drawing songs on cheeks and temples and hair, and it was a balm for his soul, all of it.

This was Atem’s palace, Atem’s rooms, Atem’s bed, not some backwater temple where everything was teeth and haste and adrenaline-fueled lust because death came knocking and Atem had the good sense not to answer. It was Atem’s own lips he was kissing. His own hairs caught underneath his fingernails. Yugi ought to be his, in more ways than one – in every way.

But then, horrifying thought struck him - what if Yugi opened his thighs for him again, now, vulnerable and consumed by his grief for a dead man? Yugi and his infamously indecisive thighs that would certainly clamp shut half-way through the deed? What then?

He did not want to find out.

How could he rule - do anything at all, really - if he couldn't trust himself with a lover?

So he pulled away.

And Yugi followed his lips, catching them with his mouth at odd intervals, purring with each kiss he stole and smacking wetly against air every time he missed.

He was glossy-eyed and precious when he awoke from his daydream, and guilty once it dissipated.  

“Ah, sorry. I don’t mean- I don’t want to hurt your feelings again,” Yugi sighed dropped back against the headboard.  “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

And thus he arrived at his point. Ill will, was it? Or perhaps he meant his chess game, where pieces were people and Yugi was under the impression that he had a say in fate’s whims. Atem would disagree if it came up, and Yugi looked the type to argue for causality.

No matter. They would never know.

“And I, you,” Atem said softly as he picked the shortest curl off Yugi’s forehead and cleared his skin of stray hairs. “You will have everything you will ever want, and you will leave. And you will swear to never forget our short time together. No gambling that.”

Yugi grit his teeth so hard his jaw clicked.

Was it the wrong thing to say? No, it felt right.

But tears welled up in the corners of Yugi’s eyes and his fists curled, and for a moment Atem truly expected him to implode or to collapse along with the walls he had constructed around his grief.

It only lasted a moment. Yugi wiped his face and relaxed his jaw, and all was right in his world again. His determination persevered, it seemed. He shook his head and flashed a smile, wide and toothy.

It was the first time Atem had really thought about how painful each of Yugi’s countless smiles must have been.  

“No thanks. Let’s play senet.”

“You need to listen to me,” Atem insisted, “I am going to abdicate.”

Something cool and sticky burst in his hand, soggy gunk or perhaps some sludge, and he found a crushed grape when he looked. Violet smears and berry underneath his fingernails disguised bloody little crescents in his palm until blood wiped red on the sheets.

Suddenly, he ached for his crown.

And that servant girl. He wanted her dead.

Yugi took his hand into his own and inspected the scratches.

“You aren’t well,” he said quietly. “I'm going to help you. Let’s play senet.”

Atem had better arguments with the statue Seto had kindly installed in council chamber for occasions when Seto was unavailable to humor Atem’s arguments. The statue was a statue of Seto. It brought him about the same results as he had when he argued with the real Seto.

Yugi was well on his way to a statue of his own.

Atem rubbed the bridge of his nose. On the other hand, senet.

Yugi needed to leave.

But senet.

“Now?” he gave. 

“Yes,” Yugi was firm, “now. Senet. Before I change my mind.” He hopped out of bed to fetch a board someone had wisely moved out of Atem’s throwing range.

His steps were heavy.

When he returned, he seemed finally afraid.

Atem caught him staring at the Puzzle again as he cleared space for their game, and on days unlike today Atem would take no notice of it, except Seto was so fresh in his mind that he sometimes forgot about the permanency of his leave. But the Puzzle, it hung heavy over the hollow of Atem’s heart and it reminded him of things he could no-longer mend. The Puzzle whined. The Puzzle wanted.

And Yugi - Yugi seemed wary of the Millennium Item in a way a rat was wary of easy food once it learned what poison could do.

It would serve them both to put weapons out of sight.

Atem could take it off and throw it anywhere, on the bed, floor, table – Yugi’s hands – it would make no difference, except there was a rotten and greedy whisper in the back of his mind, and it made Atem frantically wish for a nice game, just one, pleasant and undisturbed, a nice game against someone who delighted him by simply existing.

But the prince him curled and purred at the thought of playing anything, the same prince that gave Mahad a dozen heart attacks after escaping palace grounds and coming back with odd things he gambled off sailors and merchants and thieves.   

“But Senet?” Atem felt his brows rise along with his expectations, and he had to slam both down, hard. Yugi was company, he reminded himself, not a challenge, not when he was spooked.

“Mhm!”

“Well, if you insist. I suppose I could humor you,” he tried to hide a wicked tickle of delight in his chest, but not too thoroughly because it seemed to sate the rot for now. “Do you have a handicap preference?”

“Please don’t.”

Yugi’s smile was still tight, and he was prickly suddenly, a ball of spikes and measuring glances, like a tailor, or perhaps a little thief.

It could well be Yugi’s gambling face. Fidgety and calculating, except he seemed more first than the latter. Actually, Atem had no idea of Yugi’s gaming habits. It seemed abnormal that he would not, almost unnatural, but he had to remind himself that their acquaintance was brief.  

Though he should’ve tried playing a game sooner, instead of chasing tail. It might have made chasing tail that much easier. Not that he would get a chance again.

“I insist. This would be our first game, I would hate to –” learn that you are a sore loser “-discourage you.”

“I’m not gonna lose. And I’m not a sore loser.”

“I did not say that,” Atem frowned, realized denial was pointless, and reached to pinch Yugi’s knee. “Stop knowing things.”

Yugi snickered at that, still shifty, but at least his smile was wider.

“I don’t need a handicap. It’ll be a good game, trust me.” He paused, brows furrowed. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s about time for a penalty game, don't you think?” Yugi told him, and Atem heard love in words that ought to sound atrocious.  

When they would ask him about it a week later - when his senses would return to him and he could speak again - this would be the last thing Atem would remember of their game. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some notes to make. This is the 2/3 milestone for the story. In terms of phases, this is the end of the Middlegame for the chess thing that's going on in the back(fore?)ground. So: 
> 
> 1\. You don't actually have to know anything about chess at all. Like zero knowledge is good knowledge. Pieces, as they get lost, will get announced, and that's all you have to know. But, by now, if I've done my writer's job kind of okay, you should be vaguely aware that the wikipedia endnote that's been an eyesore for 12 chapters so far has actually been very literal all along. 
> 
> 2\. I will probably have to add 1 or 2 chapters to the anticipated total. 
> 
> 3\. I got an interesting tumblr ask about this being an M. Night Shamalamalama-esque "this had been an RPG all along" type of deal, because Ryo showed up and basically admitted he is responsible. I don't think this is a common assumption, but I don't want it assumed at all. The point Ryo was making was that he tried making it an RPG, on Yugi's request, but he failed miserably, and instead tethered the game to real people.


	13. (tick tock, game clock)

 1.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can I please get some comments... q _ q


	14. Queens, Pt. 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CHAPTER WARNING: long, dirty, and ploty. Very dirty.

[ ](http://iwcmediaecology.pbworks.com/f/alphabet.bmp)

1.

Atem dreamt of Yugi.

And dogs.

The dogs could care less for Atem. They sniffed rears and played amongst themselves, and no matter how many of them Atem scratched and petted not one remained interested in him for long.

Atem was a very important person.

Didn’t the dogs know that?

Yugi lay on the dusty floor among the dogs, dressed in his beggar rags and with his knees bent to the black skies. The dogs licked his fingers but his interest was elsewhere.  

“Should I stop playing?” he asked no one.

“I don’t know,” Atem frowned, very frustrated with his own inability to wrangle dogs.

 “I’m doing harm,” Yugi said, “but I don’t think I will stop.”

Oh, to hell with this!

Atem left the dogs and marched to the crossroads where all that awaited him was a pile of Yugi’s strange skin-tight purple clothes.

Atem put them on.

 

2.

Want soaked through the marsh of his mind and he registered garden flowers in a vase just to the side of his vision, between the horizon and a mountain, floating above the twilight of the city on pillars of railings and left of pyramids of honeycakes, but south of curtains.

He saw a flower he liked and he wanted it in his hand.

 Being in want of things was one of the first senses to come back to him.

He asked for grapes and elaborate jewelry.

He didn’t think to ask for vengeance.

Mana brought them, along with a blanket and caution, and when Atem took grapes from her she collapsed and cried against his knee. She cried for a long time. She stayed with him after sleep claimed him and she was still with him when Mahad carried him from the balconies to bed.

Mahad stayed too, and he felt Mahad’s tears against his arm when a feather came loose in his comforter at night and Atem thought to pull it free.

They took turns staying with him after that, their tears happier each time he spoke and their magics angrier, until eventually not even servants could breach his doors.

He found himself resting against Mahad’s shoulder one lazy afternoon, with a comb running idle paths though brown hair and a caged finch singing a melody just for them. 

He blinked. It was sand against membrane, crust against scraped skin. He blinked, and it burned, but there was color. 

“I didn’t die,” he realized.

Mahad gave him more hair to brush when he buried his head into Atem’s shoulder and nearly cried again.

His reason returned to him as gently and gradually as want did, and he told Mana that _‘he didn’t kill me,’_ and to Mahad that _‘it was unexpected’_ and _‘no one should be this familiar with shadow games.’_

Questions were difficult. _‘Why didn’t he kill me?’_ was his second. His first was _‘why did he try?’_ but he didn’t know if he meant his old friend or his new friend. Their reasons were the same. That he knew.

He made Mahad open the doors again, a week after the game when they thought to tell him a week had passed, and four days since flowers caught his interest. The first three days did not happen for him.

There weren’t many in his court who thought many more days would happen for him at all, and ill gossip traveled on better footing than good will. Atem nearly ordered a guard to weed it out, but he realized in time that the problem had a wide scope and even the guards were guilty of it. He sent Kalim instead.

And he took note of guilty faces, surprised faces, disappointed faces - faces of all those who stood to profit from his trip, a foul day that followed, and his subsequent ‘illness’ – and there were many.

Too many. Too many were baffled when he strode down the length of the throne room, regal and unforgiving, with five yards of cape trailing him and as much gold paint on his skin as he had skin, with two mages flanking him and lightning cracking around them whenever anyone took a step too close. Too many had bent only their knees but not their heads.

He hadn’t held full court for a while, and they thought he’d die soon anyway. They’ve gotten lax.

So he scaled the stairs with none of his usual aid. He sat, and as he sat he caught the eyes of a guard and traced a quick line between half-empty goblets in ravenous hands of his courtesans.

The guards were methodical.

They tore the cups from hands and wine spilled between the tiles.

“Well?” he purred at their confusion, “get down, will you?”

Then he addressed the gossip problem.

It took him the entire morning to address the gossip problem, but he addressed it, and it was a trial more for himself than for anyone else, to see the damage Yugi had done, to his court and to his soul.

The fiftieth offender he sentenced to a lashing gave him pause because marring his skin would be the extent of his punishment. Not one head rolled. He was tempted - or just didn't care enough - but not one head rolled.

The fifty-first offender was the last. She was caught telling her maid that she couldn’t wait for a new pharaoh, since Atem _‘you know, didn't have height as his blessing, and probably, tee-hee, had no blessings in the manly department, wink, if you know what I mean’_ because why else would he refuse her in his bed that one time? Because she was a bitch, that’s why. Extra lashes for being a bitch. 

“Prince, are you sure he did anything to your soul?” Mana whispered into his ear. “You’re still petty.”

 Atem asked for her hand and tapped her wrist lightly with a finger.

“Bad,” he told her, “no gossip.”

Mana’s giggling face was like coming home.

They gave him Yugi when he thought to ask for him, after they dug him from his prison cell and cleaned him up a little.

When Yugi saw him, Yugi cried.

The court cleared out as he limped down the length of the throne room, with guards dragging him through his odd missteps.

But one sharp glance, and they were gentler.

Yugi still shivered and sobbed quietly when they dropped him. They didn't kick him farewell, but they announced him, something about filthy vermin and presence of a God, and Yugi just nodded at their words, lowered himself to his knees at the very edge of the steps and kept crying into his scabbed palms.

Atem’s heart broke to see him like this. It shouldn't - for many good reasons - but it didn't seem to care, and he dug his fingers into creases of armrests to stay put.

He did not wish this upon Yugi. Yugi could've sent him off to the afterlife with his own bare hands, and Atem would still not wish him to suffer for it.

But he couldn't, _wouldn't_ , comfort him.

Matters of broken hearts mattered little in precarious political situations. Hearts he could mend later, in private, or at the very least he would give Yugi a chance to try. Politics not so much, not when his entire PR staff (of one) threw his silly hammer into the wind and strolled off into the sunset to live high and free.

He probably fucked all three of his dragons already. Their children would be oh so very needlessly tall.  

Gods, he missed Seto.

Mahad, meanwhile, simmered at his side just as Seto would, except he was so obvious about his anger that even Yugi's jailers felt his electric wrath for their guilt by association. 

Mahad didn't execute Yugi, Mana had told him, because it would mean accepting that Atem would never wake and do it himself.

That, well, it implied _something_. Atem was never one to question his blessings. Gods willed it so, and so it was. And that went both ways.

Yugi, on his floor, still shaking and crying, was testament to that.

But Atem's throat was too dry to tell him that.

Dry and sandy and parched. The insides of his lips molded against his teeth, and lazy and unfocused blur enveloped the room. There was mint in the back of his tongue, water in his sinuses, and even blinking was too much of a burden.

What if nasty things came from Atem's mouth if he opened it? What if he ordered Yugi to die for his crimes?

Rancor, that's what he tasted. Cool and gritty between his teeth.

 "I know why you did it," he heard himself say, but his voice didn't come out quite right. "But you nearly ended my life. A week in prison for it is less than appropriate, but I won't not execute you. Don’t cry.”

Yugi tried to ball his fists and nod, but a hiccup tore through his throat and he choked on it. His little coughs were wet, and he cried through them. He just cried and cried and cried. 

Some of Atem’s nails broke against metal. He reached out for Mahad’s arm.

“No? Then bow. Nice and low, dear. You will feel better.”

Onto his hands and knees Yugi went, slow and aching, trembling at his joints and mindful of purple stains on his skin. But he didn’t stop crying, not for a long time, and even when his tears dried up against the tiles and his forehead slumped against the floor, Yugi still sobbed.

Atem shut his eyes and winced when the sound of it still haunted him in the darkness. 

It was awful.

Yugi’s anguish was awful.

His sobs did eventually grow softer, but only once he heard Atem’s descent and the soft ruffle of the cape when a pharaoh, gold and hat and all, sat on the steps by his side and shushed him.

“Th-hey said I killed you. They s-said you… that you were… de- dea-”

Atem stroked his shoulder with his knuckle, lightly to see if he would wince or withdraw, but Yugi jumped into him, grabbed his hand and kissed every knuckle and nearly got them both tackled by armed men with spears. Even Mahad chose fists over magic.

This was how Atem ended up handling Yugi around his bruises and forgiving him.

Just more oil for the gossip pyre.

Oh well.

Yugi just sniffled and huddled his rags against Atem’s silks and realized very little of the precarious situation he created by simply existing. 

But that didn’t matter. Scabs on Yugi’s knuckles mattered. Blood underneath his fingernails mattered. His arms, stained with colorful fingerprints. His bruised knees. He’d somehow even gotten skinnier.

Atem tipped his chin, but his face was fine.

“Did they feed you?”

A shrug.

“Did they touch you?”

A definitive ‘no,’ one that was equal parts true and dreaded, and Atem supposed that if the guards would not beat his face because he looked like their king, they would never dare touch him.

“Twice now you’ve been reckless at our expense and we've gotten away with it, if you can call it that,” Atem traced a particularly nasty bruise down a bony arm. “I dread to see the next time you do it.”

“I was trying to help,” Yugi whispered. Black static cracked through the gold - Mahad’s or Mana’s, Atem couldn’t tell, but he could feel their fury in the hairs on his neck.

“Yes. You’ve made a habit of it, it seems.”

“My king can’t mean to forgive him,” Mahad protested in an outburst so unusual for him that Mana went fishfaced.    

"We can't know the damage yet," she agreed.

"I'll do as I please," Atem said.

"Damage?" Yugi sniffed.

"We'll do what we want," the shadow agreed.

"Yes, damage," Mana snapped. "Please, prince. Make it fair."

"Vengeance will earn me no favours," Atem sighed. "He remains important to me. He meant well, I think. Shame he failed.”

Yugi winced under such pointed scrutiny.

“Did I?” he thought to ask.

“I don't know what you did,” Atem confessed and felt something nameless stir in the wake of an afterthought he refused to acknowledge, lazy and sated and slightly singed, but not burnt away like Yugi ought to have done.

All Yugi said to that was “half-measures,” and then he said nothing at all.

Atem ordered him cleaned and fed before they threw him back to the dungeons, after the stairs became too indignant and Mana nearly managed to get into punching distance.

He returned to his throne a little less a God and more a man.

"I don't have long," he whispered to Mahad, whose grave face confirmed he knew the extent of Atem's words. "I must get my affairs in order."

"But the Priest too-" Mahad began, but decided against finishing. "Forgive me."

"No, forgive..." Atem said softly to give Mahad a moment to brace himself for hearing his friend and not his king, "forgive _me_ when I ask you to swear your loyalty to him. It must be Seto, he has the blood for it, and I can trust him to be fair."

"He abandoned us when we needed him," it hissed.

"That is of no consequence. I want him found."

Mana, being Mana, parked her butt on the step where he sat a minute ago and put her fists under her chin.

“He’s half-way to Memphis by now. Some traders passed his ship on their way. Said he was wearing funeral clothes.”

“How can they know it was his ship?”

Fucking Seto.

 

3. 

"Take my hand."

Rust scraped against the gold of his bangles. Yugi was cautious, a trapped bird wary of children poking greedy fingers through its cage, so Atem grasped at air.

"You're meant to reach for us," Atem withdrew his hand and the rust of the bars streaked his skin, "not we for you. Other prisoners had their hands beaten for it on our way down here."

 "Then maybe that's why I didn't. Or maybe if I touch you, you'll die again."

Yugi's voice was far too quiet and graceful for someone wedged between the furthest walls of a cell.

"We don't like you lying."

"I said 'maybe,' okay?" was Yugi's hoarse reply. "And what's with the royal 'we'? ...I'm not trying to upset you. Sorry. I'm sorry. Your... your majesty."

In the end Yugi deflated, hugged his knees and hid his face. But he couldn't hide the ugliness of his sobs, and Atem crouched and pressed himself against the iron bars. Even like this he could barely reach him, but his very fingertips brushed linen just enough. He stretched outward, and his shoulder burned, and his cheek was grinding against iron, but there was cloth between his nails, and, with considerable effort, there was cloth in his fist.

He pulled at cloth and towed Yugi with it.  And what could Yugi do? He resigned, wrapped hesitant fingers around Atem's wrist and crawled the rest of the way. He clutched at bars and Atem covered his hands with his own.

Purple, blood-shot eyes, shaky lips, a king and a mirror. They sat on their knees at crossroads, clutching at each other through jail bars, and Atem cared little for what Yugi saw in him when he looked at a pharaoh sitting in the dirt.

"They say you will not eat," he whispered and pressed his forehead against rust, if only to reach through bars again, into Yugi's domain where everything had a lilac tint to it and the air was thick with monsters.

He tipped Yugi's chin and inspected his skin, leathery and dry, but clean because at least someone had bathed him.

"I wasn't hungry," Yugi said quietly and looked away, but his hands betrayed him and he cupped Atem's fingers and pressed them into his face and _basked_.

"More lies," Atem looked to an untouched bowl of something greasy and a cup of stale beer. "You should not be picky now."

Yugi was uninterested in Atem's conversation. His answer was short and vague, like he wasn't paying attention to his words, or rather, Atem's warmth was all he cared for.

"I can't," he murmured and closed his eyes, "don't worry about it. It's just dinner."

"Why won't you beg me to get you something else?" Atem squeezed his hand. "Or to free you? You should see I want nothing more, all you need is ask for it."

Yugi blinked his tears away before he dared to meet his eyes.

"You..." he tried, "I..." but his words failed him. "I don't..."

He stared at Atem, desperate and mute, grip tight on his hands and eyes begging Atem to finish his sentence for him.

This was not Yugi he came to adore, fierce and determined to grind the earth until it was sand and dust and he found what he had lost to a funeral mound.  This was a shy creature, meek and a little cracked around its edges by the weight of his decisions.

This one was fragile. This one hid from them for too long.                                      

Atem towed him closer by his arms and dusted him off, got to his feet and dragged Yugi with him. Frowned. Nodded a guard over to unbar the door.

But Yugi looked between freedom and the bars, and chose to stare at his feet.

"You need care," but Yugi didn't know what he meant, so Atem had to tell him to "come along" to get him out of his cell. Yugi kept glancing back as he walked, throwing brisk stares over his shoulder as if he wasn't sure if he would be returning.  

Atem could not reassure him either way.

"Feed him," he told some servants once he saw a handful of unintimidating boys scrubbing the floors as their evening chores. "Make sure he eats, then give him another bath."

"Um," Yugi began but ran out of air, and three deflated sentences in a row from him were three too many, so Atem stopped dead in his tracks, and the guards flanking him stopped, and the mortified servants on the floor stopped breathing. Yugi, predictably, bumped into him.

"Yes?" he prompted gently once he sensed he caused anxiety where he only meant to be receptive to rude conversations.

"Um. Nevermi- you're gonna make me say it anyway, won't you? Okay, I just. I was gonna say. Those guys," Yugi shrugged to the floor guiltily, "look like they have no idea what's going on. And they're kinda busy?"

Atem did not care for his point.

 

4. 

The air was dark and chalky by the time he retired. Locusts hummed and candles flickered, and a pretty servant boy who retired him informed him that the only thing more difficult than getting Yugi into a bathing pool was getting him out. And, also, the boys on the floor were slave boys, so they knew what to do with Yugi about as much as Yugi knew what to do with them.

"So now he's stressing out the slaves," Atem sighed and appraised his own servant who only laughed politely.    

This boy was on the short side, with light skin and hands that lingered purposefully. He was a year older than Atem, a spectacular conservationist, a terrible singer, and remarkably the only servant the palace could spare to tend a pharaoh on this inconspicuous candle-lit night.

The palace was also apparently so strapped for linen that they couldn't afford his servant a shirt.

But it were the flower petals in his bed that did it, and Atem was laughing, charmed, and decisively uninterested in everything offered to him. Oh, Mana, that clever witch. At least she forgot to put spikes in his hair and never instructed him to preface every sentence with a healthy 'um.'

"My king, I wouldn't want to presume-"

Atem ruffled his hair.

"It's the things we can't have that we want most."

He paused, and the act of removing jewelry suddenly required a lot less touching.

"I will bring him here, if it's his company his highness wants.”

"Him who?"

"The assassin who stole a God's face," was the conspicuous answer, hushed with thrill and excitement of such a thing.

Is that what they say?

Yugi was still stewing in the pool when Atem found him, a large and pale prune with raisins for fingertips, and Atem would laugh at him if Yugi wasn't so painfully ashamed to be in his presence.

So he toed off his slippers and padded across wet tiles with caution and no ill will.

When Yugi noticed him, he ducked and curled into himself, not out of shyness because oil lamps in servant baths were dim and the water was murky with scent powder. Not shyness, not entirely. Shame, that's what this was, tight and awkward.

"The water's still nice if you want to come in," Yugi muttered into his elbow after a while, and Atem was just glad to see the first light of his confidence returning. "I think there's some sort of plumbing, but I can't figure it out."

Atem dipped his toe by Yugi's shoulder.

The water was not nice. These baths were not nice. Yugi still wasn't nice - but that was nothing new - and there were a dozen better places for Atem to be in the middle of the night. Dry places, breezy places, his bed perhaps, or at least somewhere padded and cozy.

Like a bed.

Atem really ought to be in bed.  

But instead he sighed, decided he could always enjoy dry robes and unawkward conversations later, surely, and so he lowered himself onto the wet ledge so he could stick his feet in the bath and Yugi could lean his cheek against his knee.

He disrupted the delicate flow of air in these dingy baths, he realized, when the flames flickered and his shadow danced across the wall in a direction that shouldn't be possible.

Water soaked though cloth all the way to his bottom.

His thighs shivered unpleasantly. 

Yugi mistook it for something else.

"Can you please say something about what I did?" he murmured and traced a lame finger into a dip on Atem's knee. "Please. You can be mad, but please, just, I don't know."

"I thought I would have something to say to you," Atem admitted. "I don't. I forgive you. I'm disappointed, but I think I'm meant to forgive you, so I do. It's best you leave it at that. And by the way," he added flatly, "I have a knife. "

Yugi snorted. Atem did too, though he wasn't entirely joking.

"I couldn't even crush him. I was going to - and then I saw it - and I couldn't. You're not gonna understand, but I couldn't. I'm sorry."

"I said, leave it alone," he threaded through Yugi's damp hair. His fingers made it through a whole inch  before hairy prison made them hopelessly stuck. He forgot, during their time apart, how alike they were, because as much as Yugi was like him, he was also in many ways decisively not.

"They said you were going to die," Yugi muttered against Atem's leg. "And I knew you'd be out of it for a bit, shadow game and all, but they kept saying it and I started believing them and I thought you died-"

"Hush."

"And I knew I'd have to hurt you, but you were just so _unwell_ , and I needed to help you, and you died, and I just- mh?"

Atem pulled him up by the hair and slid a palm over his mouth.

"Shut up."

"Mh," Yugi hummed lamely and leaned into his touch. His eyelids grew heavy and his fingers were terribly unskilled as they ghosted up Atem's thigh and into folds of cotton. Atem humored his advances for a moment.

A very long moment.

Yugi closed his eyes eventually, and his lips mouthed aborted words until he settled on nibbling. Teeth and lips, wet and sloppy. Toothy, open-mouthed kisses against Atem's palm slowed their slow evening into an ever slower crawl, and even the air, warm and breezy as it was, turned stagnant and familiar around them. Yugi kissed his palm, and suddenly Atem was the safest he'd ever been, combing through wild grass and trapping butterflies with his hands, and Mana was laughing, and Mahad was concerned, and Seto was deciding if smuggling the prince out of the palace would get him beheaded or hung.

He was charmed, not seduced - but Yugi didn't know that - and his nails had danced into Atem's underwrap by the time he though to stop it, a little too late to pretend he wasn't in a mood for such things. Not that he was. Not with a knife in his belt, not on the floor, and not with someone who only wanted his services.

He could at least want Atem's pardon, something substantial and appropriate, but no.

Yugi came off his hand with a wet smooch and strings of spit smacked back against his lips. He slurred a confused "wha?" when Atem scooted away from him.

"You only ever want my company after a good scare," Atem locked his elbows to lean away and judge him. "You insist on being rude with me - to make a point we're equal - which I've come to think is rather endearing. And yet you treat me like your whore."

Yugi meant to interrupt, but Atem shot him a sideways glare and then refused to look at him altogether.

"You will get nothing from me on these terms," he concluded, and punctuated his displeasure with a sour 'hmph' he aimed at the wall.

The shame came back, he could smell it. It drew lines between Yugi's brows and pulled his shoulders forward.

"I'm sorry about that!" he blurted, "it was mean and stupid and I thought about it a lot and I just-"

"And-you-just," Atem mimed, "presumed you could touch me at your convenience the very moment I forgave you. And, later, once you've burned  through your adrenaline you will remember you have a dead lover waiting for you. You know what? I have a harem. I regret I came."

He got up to leave, but Yugi latched onto his ankles.

"Don't be pathetic."

"Why did you come?"

"I came to shun you."

"You're a liar."

"I am," Atem agreed, "now unhand my leg."

"You're mad at me."

"Of course I'm mad," he hissed, "you tried to kill me. I give my love to strangers and _of course_ they try to kill me. Who next, Mana? With a well-aimed spellbook since she won't ever bother reading it, even for murder spells?"

Yugi pressed his lips to his ankle and stubbornly whispered how sorry he was.

"Stop that," Atem tried to kick him away without actually kicking him. "You may not touch me."

"I'm apologizing."

"You are _not_. You are stealing a favor! And even for that you should be kneeling, not sitting in a bath!" Then, out of the corner of his eye, Atem spotted movement, another shadow out of place, or a servant out of line. "Anyone who disturbs me will lose his head! Where were you when he tried to murder your king, huh? Get out. And you!" he shrugged his foot, "out of the bath!"

"Um!?"

"Now!"

Atem followed Yugi's blunt stare, to marks of violence on his arms, all moderate, but they stained his skin in a way water couldn't wash. No lashes, the servants told him. No marks that would remain with him for life. But Yugi hid them, ashamed of what they meant, ashamed, and oh so very frightened.

"Don't shy from your bruises," Atem snapped. "You earned them. Come now. Let us see them. Out."

A small noise was his answer, a little bird that flew into a sandstorm against Atem's orders, and it could've meant anything. But Yugi didn't budge, so it meant 'nope.'

"I'll drag you out."

"I'm naked."

"I don't care."

"I really don't want to."

"You will do as we tell you!"

Atem realized his mistake once Yugi dislodged himself from his feet, sluggish and unblinking, with drag in his limbs and enough shame to punish them both with its weight.

But it was too late. First, his lower belly surfaced, speckled with bruises and thin. Then, his hips. His cock, his thighs, his knees against stone before he picked himself up and stood before Atem, shivering and naked and humiliated.

This was not an embarrassing thing! Atem could think of nothing, not even in peasant etiquette, that would warrant for this second-hand embarrassment Yugi had forced him to share.  And yet there Atem stood, with dry eyes and heat in his cheeks.

He glared daggers into the wall behind Yugi. His eyeballs pricked. He wanted to shove him back into the pool and pretend he never came out at all.

"...I regret I made you do this."

Yugi shuffled and covered his privates with his palms, probably figuring Atem's hesitation meant his irritation had simmered down. And he was right, for what it was worth. Atem just wished he had a cape to cover him.

He didn't, so he took him into his arms instead.

A hesitant 'um,' but Yugi settled.

"I have regrets," Atem complained, indignant.

Yugi sniffled.

"Me too."

Ah, but what was this, stiff and awkwardly prodding Atem's thigh? Did Yugi have a snake in the pocket of the clothes he wasn't wearing, or perhaps a sword hilt at his belt? A pipe? Long fruit?

Atem cupped his shoulders and pushed him back so he could peek between their bodies and confirm supple swelling in Yugi's cock. He smiled meanly before he could think any better.

"Are we exited?"

Yugi sent a glare down his pretty body as if it offended him.

"You're making me uncomfortable," he admitted seriously, "in a bad way. But I'm still..."

"It happens," Atem caught his chin and locked their eyes. "You're... difficult."

Atem could tell him about his dreams, full of smiles and purple eyes, and how afterlife was merciful and required no difficult decisions from him.   

'Difficult' meant many things. Being around Yugi was difficult, now as much as ever. It was difficult to keep in mind his timid and fragile manner when the decisions he made were hard and calculated and rather cruel - but being cruel right back at him was difficult, so very difficult, difficult and awful and wrong.

But Yugi had done him a great favor... hadn't he?

Atem thought about it, and the more he thought the less he felt whole. Something, he knew, was amiss. Perhaps it was the salt with which he spoiled his own fields, or fire that charred the flimsiest of bridges that kept him loved by very few people who still did. It wasn't that, he knew, but whatever severed from him took his salt and smoke with it.

That, he thought, for now, was worth it.

And _this_. This misplaced lust Yugi had for him, the one Atem coded offensive because it was difficult for him to admit such simple things had the power to hurt him - yes, this. Understanding _this_ was difficult. This push, this pull, this longing - this dissent, because why would anyone in their right mind deny him? - and it wasn't like Atem had asked him to choose - but really, a dead person and a God-king, what the hell kind of a choice...  - and now, what, sorry-I-almost-murdered-you-let's-consumate-this-glorious-occasion - really?

He should, perhaps, sit Yugi down and explain his mind to him - but, well, no, because no.

Also, there was a matter of the knife in Atem's pocket - a real knife, not a phallic token of his affection - and Atem should not feel as safe as he did around someone who prompted him to bring a knife to a rendezvous.

"I wanna say you're difficult, too. We keep expecting things from each other," Yugi muttered and fidgeted against Atem, back in his arms because being there beat standing around naked. "But jail, that's difficult. I missed you a lot. Just not the angry parts. Good to have you back, I guess."

Yes, a segue into another fight was exactly what Atem needed, especially now that Yugi looked like he would shatter to his words, or run back to his cell just to hide from him.

He felt sour lines creep between his brows.

"Peace, friend," he offered.

"Yeah."

That would not do. Hastily, Atem pressed himself into Yugi's arousal and cupped his cheek.

"Yugi," he called him by name and pecked Yugi's forehead once it had the desired effect, "dear, enough of this, I mean it. Peace."

"Oh! Oh," Yugi's voice was small, and the baths echoed his reluctance when he had nothing 'peaceful' to say. "But you said you didn't want-"

Oh! Had Atem put him off? Well.

"I said it, and then I saw you," he leaned in and whispered just a hair away from trembling lips, brushing them with each vowel and warming them with his breath, "all of you. And I held you, and remembered you taste sweeter than songs and make light where you walk. How could I mean what I said? You're my despair, my dear, and my demise - look at what you've done to me. And yet," he let his mouth linger, "I need..." 

He needed an peace prize for his considerable talents.

Hook, line, sinker. His smolder burned right through Yugi's reluctances.

And Yugi, predictably, melted.

Hell, Atem was sure he could've melted him right on the throne room floor, or in his cell, or anywhere between here and there, and it would've taken neither considerable effort nor too much convincing to actually get him on his knees and take him.   

It ought to taste sweet, this knowledge that Atem finally had him and could have him any way he pleased. Enough sweet words, and Yugi would let him have whatever Atem would want of him, anything, everything - Yugi would give it up for as little as a promise of comfort.

And, just like that, Atem had handfuls of eggshells where a thought ago he held a dear friend.

His fingers curled inward and he withdrew. He didn't mean to seem hesitant, but Yugi noticed, and they both broke just a little more.

"Um, so...?"

"Ah," Atem smiled quickly, "I'm only looking. You're beautiful."

The faintest of smiles found its way to the corners of Yugi's lips, and he blinked away, meek, embarrassed and a little too docile for Atem's peace of mind. His lips trembled with words he did not have. It wasn't right. Yugi should always have words of nonsense on his lips and banter in his eyes.

Atem brushed a thumb over his bottom lip to soothe him, down his chin and through the curves of his chest. Yugi gasped softly for him, leaned into each touch and watched dark fingers dent his skin and make him shudder.

His nipples were sweet, his ribs were jagged.

Atem pressed their noses together to catch his eyes again, to make Yugi look into his eyes and watch wisps of need blow his pupils out and part lips in a sensual 'oh' when Yugi felt a caress down the length of his cock, skin hot and thin against cool fingertips tracing veins on the underside.

"Shh," Atem told him as he squeezed the engorged tip though his loose fist, gentle and teasing, and Yugi jerked into his touch but made no demands.  

If this was anyone else - a reluctant concubine or a restless servant - Atem wouldn't. It would be far too much trouble. Yugi was too delicate to give him anything other than his body, and Atem didn't want to take from him what little Yugi had left.

"I won't tax you," he promised, his voice low. "A gift, just for you, hm?"

His sweet lover didn't look like he understood his promise, not entirely, so Atem kissed his mouth over and over until Yugi didn't care anymore, until Atem's soft pecks lingered and Yugi's teeth came out to catch him and lick into him and kiss him right back.

Ah! Yugi kissed with teeth. Atem forgot, and now a shy tongue wandered into his mouth to remind him. He adjusted his loose grip into something tighter and tinted with desperation, to accommodate inexperience and a healthy dose of bedside aggression, because why not? If this was the way Yugi thought it ought to be done, then now was a terrible time to stress him out with new experiences.

They parted, lingered, came together again and made filthy sounds, and Atem had to wrestle him into stillness to get anything else done.

Anything else, like looking. Yugi's eyes glossed over every time Atem surveyed his body, and now that bright flush from his cheeks had seeped down his neck and over his shoulders. It was a treat to see him like this, properly naked and pleased to be seen, even in the dim lights of the bathhouse.

Carefully, with the pads of his thumbs, Atem brushed little knobs of his nipples and let his free fingers settle feather-light at his sides. Perky, but still supple and delicately round. Sensitive when Atem scraped around one with a nail, and Yugi made a yielding sound in the back of his throat. Soft flesh of his chest yielded, too, and Atem dug into it only to tease and extort sounds, because he liked Yugi's sounds.

He liked those sounds between his teeth. His mouth closed around soft arterial dip where he could taste music as his fingers closed around a nipple and pinched it into proper hardness.

His free hand had found a slight tremor in Yugi's hip on its way to palm his cock. Anticipation? Or perhaps strain from trying to stand still and proud for Atem, and Yugi was such a good boy for it. 

Atem framed his bare hip and allowed his eyes to feast on rosy skin and fleshy nipples again, because he had Yugi's patience trembling beneath his palms and there was little he could do to prolong it. But the dip in Yugi's belly, his cock, his thighs - all rounded and supple for him - he'll taste it all some night more peaceful. 

And then Yugi made a noise, one of his uncertain and nasal hums that almost made Atem wonder what he'd done wrong this time, except Yugi just brought a hand to his hip and traced the contours of a greenish bruise right under the bone.

Did he think a bruise caught Atem's attention over his gorgeous cock and dimples in his cheeks when he laughed? Yugi will never think this again. Atem hissed some nonsense about it into Yugi's mouth, over and over, a litany of promises and praise only half-true because no praise could ever do Yugi justice, until lips tasted like rust between his teeth. Until Yugi believed him.

He'll rust the rest of his skin, too, with his teeth and his words, until tender flesh would tremble under his every touch and Yugi would writhe and choke and scream for him - for him - and no one else, never again anyone else.

Atem will make him happy.

He swore to it, wrung a breathless "ah!" from pearly skin when Yugi's feet kicked uselessly against nothing, until his heel found a stair and he stepped up, just level, just perfect for Atem to press his face into him and drag his teeth over a shy nipple. It perked for his sloppy mouth soon enough.

Yugi was trembling now. Every inch of skin Atem had pressed against him was buzzing, too. Yugi's tension tasted raw, and its flavor grew darker with each moment Yugi forced his little body to take Atem's advances. 

And the sounds he made, needy and excited, they were honey on the tip of Atem's tongue, real and sugary, and they sounded like promises and vows, little nonsense Yugi would whisper to him on lazy mornings when sun would kiss their skin but the only kisses they wanted were each other's - and so they would hide beneath sheets and giggle and share secrets, and Atem would need no one else ever again.

They were pleased sounds. It pleased Yugi to be wanted like this. It made his knees tremble against Atem, knees that could part for him and bring them together - if Atem ever came after that part of him.  

Together they closed their fingers around Yugi's shaft, except Yugi was breathless and needy and Atem was still a king with reservations about putting indignant organs into his mouth in the dingiest bathhouse of them all.

They settled on light strokes and teasing touches, Yugi's flesh thick and sleek in Atem's palm. There was a pulse beneath his ear where he rested his head against Yugi's heart. That hum that was sweeter than any song.

But Atem's peace was only his own. It took Yugi but a minute to get greedy, for his patience to expire along with his worries, for hands to get grabby, for fingers to trek over Atem's shoulders and latch on and whine and demand control in a profession Yugi's experience was so lacking that any sane man would skip this nonsense, pin him down, and do to him things he knew they would both enjoy.

He would lower Yugi onto his back, and soothe his fears, and part his thighs, and make him purr.

Instead, Atem pinched a healthy patch on his flesh, earned himself a giggle, and tipped their bodies against a stair.

He landed hard against stone, and squarely into spilt water, but Yugi's knees landed at his sides and nothing else mattered.

"Pfft," Yugi laughed against his cheek.

 Their tumble amused him, as most things did when his clever mind was overcome by raw instinct, and he was once again all mischievous smiles and bitten fingernails right inside royal skin. Such terrible habit. They painted Atem's nails with pepper to wane him off it, and he never had a concubine dare damage his body.

But did Yugi care, hell! His teeth would pierce Atem's shoulder should he let him linger, and he had to pull him off by the hair.

But the sight of his swollen lips made something dark and impatient stir inside Atem, too. Yugi eyes, wide and black and stupid with need, rolled back the moment Atem's fingers slipped down his tailbone and between his cheeks. His gasping mouth smiled the harder Atem pressed against giving flesh, just to tease him, to watch him whine and bite his lips just so.

Yugi was stunning like this - a mess of his own impatience. There wasn't a thing about him that wasn't perfect.

But they were only kissing! They had kissed each other's skin and Atem had fondled Yugi's cock for maybe a minute. They shouldn't both be half-finished already. This - whatever the hell this was, again, dear Gods this was temple of Anubis all over again, why, why won't Yugi just lay down and stay down - this most certainly would not last ten more minutes.

 It made him wonder if it would always be like this between them, erratic and unschooled, if Yugi would always straddle him, tease him with his welcoming thighs, and take from Atem things he had no right to be taking.

Like hearts.

But Atem pressed fingers against his hole, flesh there tight at the edges and soft if he toyed with it around his fingertips, grabbed himself a handful of cock and pretended he had no needs of his own. Fuck it. He'll take Yugi off the edge and then fuck him silly, between crisp bed sheets and white feathers Yugi would rip right out of Atem's pillows.

Except he won't, he reminded himself. This was a gift.

"Tell me what you like," he whispered against the shell of Yugi's ear and felt the heat of his breath come back to him. "You can't be happy with just this."

A breathless and confused "wha-?" was all Yugi could offer him.

"This can't be all you want."

"Umm?" Yugi slurred and thrust into a fist Atem made for his cock. "Oh, mmm. 'Kay."

A graceless hand snuck its way between their bodies and ruffled around for access into Atem's underpants.

Not what he meant!

He hissed and his hips jerked at contact he wasn't expecting, made his eyes cross and his teeth screech, but this wasn't -

"Yea-?" Yugi said and squeezed Atem where he was thickest. And then, "mn-hey, no, come on," when Atem withdrew his attention and even snatched Yugi's wrist away.

"Why," Yugi whined when he would not let him get back at it.

Atem pressed their faces together.

"If I put clothes on you, would you run? To my rooms?" he licked his lips. "I just. These baths."

To be fair, the baths were truly awful.

As awful as Yugi's plight, apparently.

Yugi threw his head back and groaned, a throaty and frustrated sound, laced with hilarity - and, yes, the sound that came later cracked from Yugi's throat and exploded into bells and clenched his belly with laughter.

It rang through moldy walls in helpless bouts of melody, and Atem was equal parts frightened by its fragility and amused.

They ended up laughing together, a mess of giggles and chuckles and bare skin and dicks - how could Atem ever forget the dicks - and he couldn't quite pin down what exactly was so absurd about any of this.

"I have no idea where we are," he confessed. "Do you know the way to my rooms?"

 Yugi snorted into his shoulder, still as naked as the day death walked him into this world.

"But pharaoh," he accused through his frustrated grin, "I taste like songs and sunshine."

Atem clicked his tongue. "Something like that," he said, and helped Yugi up.

Yugi, in turn, offered Atem his hand - the wrong one and a little slanted - but Atem took it, stood, and pretended unexpected courting didn't warm his cheeks.

They ran through the halls, hand in hand, Yugi notably put off by two sets of night robes that just appeared where he had left his prison rags, because 'what if someone saw us, you know, doing stuff' and that was apparently so very upsetting. 

Atem didn't have the heart to tell him that, well, yes, there was mostly likely a handful of servants out there praying to Ra to burn the sins from their eyes.

He still had Yugi giggling when they stole a torch from a wall and pushed through the nearest door of the guesthouse.

Ah. Ahaha!

"Oh my gosh we're so, so sorry!!"

 Atem couldn't quell his laughter, not when some mortified official trapped flies with his gaping mouth, roused from his sleep by two- well, someone's getting a lashing for that word - before he realized just who it was that stumbled into his guest apartments at three in the fucking morning.

Yugi towed him out and slammed the door and smoked out of his ears because the heat in his cheeks had to vent, else giggles would crack his ribs and he would die, just die, and Atem would die with him, and then Seto would kill them both for a good measure.

"Ha-hush!" Yugi pressed his finger to his mouth and stole into another room, hiccing and trying his very best to appear Upset And Stern With Atem's Behavior. "Hello? Oops. Um, hi, room service? No? Sorrybye!"

Third door was charmed with luck and vacancy, and they stumbled in and laughed, laughed as they lit the candles and torches and lamps, and Yugi was concerned about fire hazards, and Atem was concerned about his hair getting singed.

They never made it to bed.

Atem caught him by the back of his neck mid-giggle, pressed their mouths together and licked his way into soft cushion between lips and teeth.

Yugi smiled at him every time he withdrew to check that Yugi was still smiling, brighter than an entire roomfull of torches and warmer than any summer night.

He still had him by the neck, palm flush against his pulse and thumb tracing patterns under his jaw. Yugi reached for Atem, too, loving and careful when he cupped his face with his soft hands, caressed Atem's cheekbones and pressed fingers between his brows as if to iron out imaginary lines between them.

And when he tipped him, Yugi fell.

His fall was free and yielding. His fists never clenched around Atem's neck to break his fall, and he giggled through air until Atem caught him by the waist and knocked the breath out of him.

Yugi's hair landed in gentle curls between the fur of an animal rug (some yellow and silky beast, thick and thoroughly combed into softness), and even the unruliest of his spikes lost most of their edges. 

And between that hair, cushioned by the fur and wedged between Atem's palms, Yugi's face burned, bright scarlet and welcoming. Yugi parted his lips for him, and Atem kissed him, slow and lighter than feathers in the wind. Yugi untied his belt for him and parted his robe, let Atem see him again and let his pale fingers linger over the parts of himself Atem loved most. His thighs, the length of his shaft, navel, chest - ah, Yugi was just a teasing line up his body, wasn't he?

Atem savored every inch and every crevice.

And then Yugi's thighs parted for him. They trembled when they stopped a considerable distance apart as if to assure Atem would made no mistake about their intent. And how could he? Yugi's cock swelled and stood thick against his belly, and, beneath his sac, if Atem tilted his head just so-

He had no need to tilt his head for something so eagerly offered to him. His fingers dug into supple flesh first, intrusive between Yugi's round cheeks but gentle against the veins of his cock. Yugi purred at contact, perhaps too distracted by Atem's touch to remember he meant to present himself, or perhaps aroused by the very same idea, who knew? Who cared? His gaze grew hooded and watery, and though no words escaped his pretty lips his eyes spoke for him.

Atem parted the rift between his ass and hissed at the sight, growled even, unreasonably pleased to see the obscene pucker that would seal their bodies together. He pressed his thumb against it, grinned when Yugi tightened on instinct, then cursed with his silly voice, willed the shudder out of his thighs, and went limp in what he probably thought was the right way to relax.

Atem snorted and sunk his teeth into a thigh to hide his glee.

There was etiquette for this. He licked skin and remembered his manners, terribly funny and tangy with lavender incense against the flat of his tongue, something about deflowering queens with seriousness reserved for war, Ra forbid a king thought their virtue a joke. Laughing belonged in brothels and wine cups, and love was in the bellies of lovers, and now between Atem's fingers as he teased apart dry rim and muscle.

But Yugi was just so still beneath him, so nervous. How could there be love in this? Love was in giggles that escaped them between kisses, love was with them on that rug, in soft hair and dimples and hands.

"We won't," Atem breathed against his cock once he ran out of thigh to bruise. "You know we won't, don't you?"

"Ah?"

"You can't. And I shouldn't."

Unease thawed right out of trembling skin at once, and Yugi seemed to melt right down to his bones until nothing propped his leg anymore and a plush thigh collapsed against Atem's ear.

He laughed quietly, and ripples of laughter were the only tightness left in him. Even his fingers were liquid once they found their way into Atem's hair and threaded though his fringe.

"I forgot for a minute," Yugi grinned, "that it's just you."

Indignant, Atem pushed his swollen cock out of his face and demanded one of the lamps.

"Right," he pried off the shade and plucked the wick from the oil well, "only a god, no one important."

"I don't think we'd be doing this," Yugi propped himself up on shaky elbows so he could better see what Atem was doing, "if I freaked out about you being a god and stuff."

Well, that was because Atem was very humble and modest.

"A great and terrible god," he dipped his fingers into oil. "Though for now I'll settle for gratitude."

"Yeah, about that...?"

Oh! Did Atem unsettle him? He didn't look unsettled, not even worried, just suspicious of Atem's nonchalance. And thoroughly aroused, for all his patience. There was that. It tickled Atem flattered to watch Yugi's bare body twitch with neglect and see his cock dark and engorged, just for him. For them.

"Well," he held up two sleek fingers, "if I may, I'd like to spoil you silly and taste your pretty cock. Unless," Atem inspected his oily nails, "you'd prefer to hear more about songs and moonlight..."

Yugi turned bright scarlet and promptly dropped back to the rug.

"Please carry on!"

What, no more poetry? Shame. Atem chuckled and bent his skill to the task.

He could talk him through it, through the way his finger slipped into him and Yugi didn't know what to do with his hands. He could come up there and speak kisses to him so they would both forget that Yugi did taste like sunlight, and how infatuated Atem had to be to think light could ever taste like a man.

But Yugi felt like light on the inside, too. Tight and almost scorching around Atem's nailbed, but silky once rough oil saturated him.

Yugi whined. Perhaps at the intrusion, perhaps at neglect. Impatience, enjoyment - it didn't matter. Yugi whined but still refused to ask for anything, and Atem was too sick of stalling. At least Yugi cock tasted like a cock against the flat of his tongue, and not a song or a color.

But Yugi's pleased gasp was a song in its own right, breathless and unprepared, as if he doubted Atem would follow through. And Yugi wasn't in the wrong for it. Maybe it was his color, too light and too strange, raw-looking but well-rounded and rather pretty for a cock. One of those that darkened with excitement, and tipped with angry pink shine. Hard and scalding between Atem's lips, and no different than rust and lavender of his mouth or between his knuckles.  

Not a good time to ask him if he was Greek. Not a good time to thank him for his cleanliness.

Perfect time to make him moan and clutch at fur. Atem teased his entrance kindly and let his tongue roam the underside of his shaft to even out what must be a very frustrating sensation for Yugi. But he laughed through some of his soft moans and grit his teeth once Atem palmed his girth and gave him some much-appreciated jerks while he mouthed his leaking tip.

Meanwhile, Atem's own cock had cold, flat floor for company. Next time Yugi whined, they whined together.

One more finger. He had to hold his cheeks taut to get his attention, and the moment his fingertip licked at the first folds of tightness Atem knew that he'd be too stiff to take it.

"O-oh," Yugi said and had the good sense to push out, the clever thing he was.

Atem imagined he'd be like this with him, too - needy and accommodating, if he ever shared himself. The thought made Atem's mouth water and he slipped down Yugi's shaft a bit too far, and Yugi thrashed under him, his patience waning. Even without seeing labor all over his flustered face Atem knew how difficult it must be for him to keep his body from thrusting.

 And, to return the favor, Atem never opened him further than strictly necessary. Let him rest his body against the intrusion, let him contract around knuckles in vain. If Yugi's body needed time to learn, then all the time in the world was his.  

But he won't need it. Getting him soft and pliant was not what Atem was after.

Quickly, he rested his tongue against the weeping slit and let the length glide into his mouth. He took it until he felt the blunt end of the tip against the back of his throat and tasted salt there. Probably enough. He wrapped his fingers around the leftover girth and gave it a well-timed tug.

Then curled his fingers inward.

In his gut, it felt better than any justice Yugi could ever scream at him if he ever dared to scream as he screamed now, better than fights left unfought and violence he would never commit against him, not even the playful kind, because their bodies matched only in height but not in strength, and  Yugi could never lift a sword never mind wield one - but he could kick, _gods_ Yugi could _really_ kick - and Atem's blood curdled and his stomach bottomed out with pleasure, no, privilege, it was a privilege to hold Yugi down as he thrashed, overwhelmed. 

Well, at least Atem's aim was good, though it was hardly any consolation. He left his fingers in but kept them politely straight, patted Yugi's clenched belly with a hand he freed from his cock, gave suction where it was needed.

He dared to come for breath only once he heard needy moans again.

"Enough?" but his voice was hoarse and Yugi was too loud. And when Atem stole a glance at him, he hissed, pressed a palm against his mouth and bit into it just to keep himself from forcing Yugi's knees together and shoving his cock between his milky thighs. He'd take him any way Yugi would give it - and Yugi would give it.

But Yugi couldn't. And Atem shouldn't.

And so they won't.

But Yugi was a beauty like this, perfect and ripe and out of his mind with passion. One of his hands was fondling a viciously red nipple. His other was a fist, white-knuckled and useless, and there would be bite-marks along his arm come morning.

"Love," Atem pressed against his clenched stomach and shook him, "more? Or shall I finish y-"

"More."

It was an ill-conceived demand, hissed and desperate, and Atem twisted his fingers to remind him of the trigger he had just beneath his fingertips. He meant this. He meant to ask if Yugi wanted to lose his mind to this.

"Ye-eah, ah huh."

Fine.

Cock, mouth and tender touch. Tender and terribly aimed. Yugi had no idea what the hell he was asking of his body to endure, and Atem wasn't about to get kicked in the face for his efforts - and then slapped in the face, and then hold Yugi as he cried.  

And what Atem gave him instead was more than enough.

Yugi keened, hissed, arched his back off the rug and kicked at the air behind them. His fleshy ass was rich rubber, silky skin tightest at his reddish entrance and then soft and hot a mere inch inside the gorge. Flesh clenched around Atem's last knuckles, taught and slippery with oil, and sliding even an inch in either direction tore moans though Yugi's belly and clogged Atem's throat with salty seed, deeper than he thought he'd take him.

Stripes of ash streaked his back and pulse drummed in his ears.

His cheeks burned between Yugi's thighs - or perhaps they burned just as every inch of him burned, hungry for his own pleasure but hungrier to choke every last drop of need from the writhing body he had at his mercy.

He hooked Yugi from the inside again, gentler this time, slower. His fingertips caressed sleek walls from the inside, just under the area that made Yugi shout and clench just a minute ago. And it was magic. Thick and viscous magic.

It spilled disjointed vowels through grit teeth. Yugi's arms spilled, too, from where they made a bloody mess of Atem's shoulders. Yugi dropped them to his belly and lost track of what he meant to do with them. But his fingers dug in, clawed at his skin to get at tightness that gnawed at him from the inside, same tightness Atem felt in the pit of his own stomach, just desperate to wrap hands around his dick and jerk the pleasure out of it himself if he had to. But there was no room for Yugi, not there, not when Atem swallowed half of his cock and polished the rest with punishing friction.

All Yugi could do was dig his palms into his stomach, arc off the floor, and beg.

This was not proper.

Atem wasn't sowing his tight body, trapped by his warmth and marking what was rightfully his with his seed. He wasn't on his back instead of Yugi, thrashing in ecstasy and dictating the terms his own pleasure.

They weren't on their sides, lazy and happy, with sweat gluing their skin together and their cocks leaking freely between their thighs.

But Yugi was perfect like this. Vaguely, Atem remembered the perversion of exhibitionism and wondered if he succumbed to it, until greed reminded him that if he ever saw another man hold Yugi open like this, exposed from the inside and out of his mind with pleasure, he'd - well, first, he'd wait politely outside until they finished - and then he'd break the stranger's neck.

Or legs, if Yugi insisted the next time they did it he'd prefer Yami not dead by Atem's hand, and anyway, Yami wouldn't need unbroken legs to please his Yugi.

His Yugi.

What he had in his mouth, leaking warm salt and rust and twitching with need, it was his. Flesh around his fingers was his. Every sound Yugi made, every spasm - all of it, his. His moment. His pain if he stretched him beyond his natural softness, and his pleasure when Yugi lost his mind for him.

He gave the tip of Yugi's cock one last parting lap, moist against the back of his tongue with all the spit and precome he allowed to accumulate in his mouth. Now free, it dripped in filthy rivulets down the raw length and over his fist.

Yugi was quick to find use for his hands then, and Atem let him take his weight for as long as it took him to crawl up his body and lick up sweat on his way to his face. Their cocks lined up, and Atem had to find the meatiest part of Yugi's shoulder before he allowed his teeth to sink home, else he'd break frail skin once his own neglected cock was finally secure in Yugi's palm.

Fuck propriety.

Fuck whoever taught him about how gods ought to love.

And fuck Yugi, which he was doing, the right way, and for that Atem was luckier than any man who breathed upon the earth but never stopped to taste the richness of the air.

Yugi whined when he kicked too hard and Atem's sleek fingers felt the cool night air again. They slipped from his little hole entirely too fast and dragged through muscle in a curve, and Atem caught sight of his face this time, his wide eyes and his gaping mouth, the way his face contorted as he shrieked and stomped his foot.

Atem had to catch him by the ankles and shove his knees up so that Yugi might get the hint and hold on, and when he did, Yugi's grip was crushing and his hisses unsated.

"Pu...a-aha, put!" he demanded through golden hairs he caught with his mouth, "back!"

Atem grinned around a mouthful of air, even managed a labored chuckle, and knocked their teeth together while his hand groped around for loosened orifices.

This time, his fingers sunk right through sleek and smooth muscle, both at once, and Yugi was almost soft for him, almost free of his natural tightness - but it was just two fingers and too much oil. He'd still clench around the girth of Atem's cock if he chose to share his body, he'd still burn out though his insides, unless Atem played with his giving flesh for hours and wrung every drop of seed from his cock.

It was a savory thought.

It made his mouth flood and his hand jerk their cocks roughly to the rhythm of Yugi's moans, tight and punishing, until Yugi's screams subsided into whistling breaths. There was blood between Atem's teeth, spunk all over his hand, and he dragged Yugi's over-sensitized cock through his own orgasm, digging his fingers inside him and squeezing their sleek lengths together until his knees spasmed, and his stomach contracted, and he saw sound and spilled all over Yugi's belly.

It looked just right through the haze of completion, creamy and rich against pearly skin.  He pumped his cock and heard Yugi mutter reassurances and felt him pet his arm.

His body still tingled viciously when he opened his eyes again.

He had rolled off Yugi by then - something about _'you're heavy'_ and _'I can't, oh god, take your fingers out.'_

Yugi had an arm over his eyes. His knees were bent. He looked familiar like this, a daydream come true, or perhaps just a dream, but he was clothed in spunk rather than peasant rags, and the dogs fucked off, and all of him tasted real.

And in that moment, for the first time in a long time, nothing could ruin Atem's happiness.

"Shouldn't you, like," Yugi complained, "help me clean up?"

Atem rolled back on top of him, pecked his cheek, then leaned down to lap cum off his chest.

"Mh. Stop that."

How insolent.

Atem punished him with teeth.

Yugi had to pry him off by the hair and then taste his own filth when Atem kissed him.

And Yugi was predictably the first to get off the rug.

He was cautious as he stood - and Atem was on the receiving end of some truly dirty stares - but Yugi's step gained a spring the moment he realized he was perfectly fine. He bounced around the room on shaky legs, snuffed the candles and fussed around to clean and dress himself, all while Atem lazed on the floor and commented about his posterior every time he caught the view.

Eventually, when trying to kick a pharaoh off a rug with a foot did him no good, Yugi huffed, complained, and sat a bathing dish on the floor next to him.

"Thanks," he dabbed the corners of Atem's mouth clean, "for my gift."

Atem laughed.

"That, and pick a town. Though a town is worth less. Never had a cock down my throat."

Yugi flushed all over, over the cock thing because he was just that kind of person, even though half of the spunk he was cleaning off Atem's thighs was his own.

"Can you not, though. With the town."

"Well," Atem rolled his eyes, "I can't exactly win you your man back. Pick something out for yourself - by gods, you have excellent taste."

"In what, men?" Yugi laughed without taking an offense, stood, bowed low, and offered Atem a polite hand. "Your hand, excellent pharaoh."

Atem pretended there was no tint of mockery in his tone and that this was a genuine display of courtship. He gave his hand, ascended from dust, stood high and proud with his eyes regal and his shoulders straight for an appropriate moment, and then stumbled off and hit the pillows with his face still entirely naked.   

The futon dipped next to his limp body a moment after the last of the candles flickered out and violet daybreak lit the room with haze. Atem could scarcely be bothered to adjust himself when Yugi slithered under his arm, though his skin was almost blistering to the touch and not at all pleasant. The morning was too hot. His eyelids were too heavy.

He couldn't see him, but he could smell sex and sweat all over him, ripe and faintly musky. It was the fragrance of peace and cooling bodies. It made the strange cotton mattress feel like his feathers and the rough linen of the pillow feel like silk.

And then there was the lightest of knocks against wood, a click of a lock, and unmistakable padded soles of servant slippers. And, with the dullest of thuds, a spear caught against the doorstep.

Between the two of them, Yugi was the most awake and the least used to being tended, so his reaction was a gasp, a shuffle, a hissed "um, excuse m--mMMH!" and Atem was on his feet at once, with his silly knife at a guard's throat, towering a good foot above the man on the count of the bed being three feet off the ground.

"What-" he spat through his teeth, and Yugi took the opportune moment to eel his way out of the guard's hands and hide behind Atem.

By then the servant had already dropped to his knees, smashed his forehead into the stained fur rug, and started praying.

The guard froze. He had duty on his mind when he eyed the vase Yugi grabbed on his way as if the little thing meant to crack Atem's skull with it, but a moment later he too dropped into prostration.

"Good pharaoh, gracious pharaoh, pardon your wretched servants-"

"What," Atem heaved, "in my own fucking _name-_ "

"-only meant to return the prisoner-"

Yugi tried to hand him a sheet to cover up.

"-to the cells after-"

Yugi really tried to push the sheet, and just tied it around Atem when Atem wouldn't take it. He didn't notice he took his knife until it was already in his pale little hands, and Atem didn't like that, and Yugi shrank under his stare and threw the knife away.

"-his highness had used and punished him-"

But it was too late. Like a snuffed candle, Yugi was once again the frightened thing Atem stole away from the cells. He even bowed as he backed away, even returned the vase carefully to the table.

Atem wanted blood in that vase. A week ago, he'd have it drained out of the men right there. 

"Mm," he purred instead, and both men fell as silent as they would if Atem had gutted their lungs with his sweetness, "then go to his cell, and keep it warm for him, hm?"

They ran.

"Indefinitely!" he screamed after them and threw the damned vase into their dust.

His heart still hammered when he had the sense to descend from the bed and sit at its edge.

He lifted his arm, and Yugi returned to him without a word. He was shaking.

"Hush," he rubbed hastily at Yugi's back. "They won't take you."

"But you're mad."

"I am not mad. I will not let them take you."

"I took your knife."

"I don't mind."

"I took your Puzzle. I hurt you. They're right. I hurt you and I'm still hurting you."

"Hush."

Yugi curled against the blasted sheet he tried so hard to wrap around Atem just minutes ago.

"I'm playing. You died and I decided to play. I'm doing harm."

"No, dear, no," Atem cradled his head and rocked them until they collapsed into soft cushions, "you are safe. I am safe. Perhaps some sleep-? I don't-"

He had no idea what to do. But, mercifully, Yugi's head lulled into him and the shyest little hand wondered into his palm and wrapped around his fingers.

"There," he breathed. "You are safe here. Do you like these rooms? Better than..." he bit his tongue, "...the priest quarters?"

"I guess."

"Good. They are yours. Much closer to mine. You like to spend time with me, don't you?"

"Yeah," Yugi closed his eyes.

"And your game, you like games," Atem cooed, "how is it?"

"Fine."

"And Anubis?"

"Cheating."


	15. Queens, Pt. 2

...

....................

 

 

4.

Doors wouldn't stay shut.

They would screech and inch open the harder he slammed them, and light would seep through the cracks.

Devils lurked in details, in the littlest of things, in his shelves that grew too tall for him to reach overnight, and in his gardens where the earliest of birds stole a duck slice from his breakfast platter.

His sandal snapped.

He let a mortified slave tend to it, but his new sandal snapped all the same, and he stormed away, barefoot and seething. 

And, by all breakfast-thieving bird gods, Atem really hated _blue_.

He contemplated the blue as he bit into a grape  - sunk his teeth into it to like he'd sink into his fingernails when he still had the luxury of childish habits - and found a worm writhing just beneath the frilled skin.

A fruit worm, half of one, a marvelous creature to notice after he had chewed and swallowed its back end.

Devils.

"He cursed me. That little devil cursed me," Atem hissed through bloody gums. "Would you think he cursed me? If you were here, would you think that?"

Seto's sickeningly blue apartments offered Atem no comfort.

Not even the dragon furniture.

"I don't know what to do."

In this arid room made almost entirely out of _blue_ and _willpower,_ his words had no audience. No one acknowledged them, except a flicker of blackness in the corner of his eye, through a crack in the door, through his conscience.

“Well,” he pursed his lips and stared at the shadow beneath his feet, “ _it_ looks like it knows what to do.”

“ _It_ is a figment of your troubled mind,” imaginary Seto snapped at him just as he snapped into existence, annoyed and blue and towering. " _It_ tried to kill a guard this morning, except your little devil broke your Puzzle worse than he broke your shoes. _It_ is an early onset of psychosis. _It_ shouldn’t know anything.”

“Then get your tall ass back to the palace and help me!”

Imaginary Seto snorted and crossed his arms.

“Since when do I need you to help you, you ignorant princeling.”

“As if you’d ever dare say this to me.”

“Some day,” imaginary Seto told him. “I’ll tell you all I think of you, and there won’t be a thing you’d do about it.”

“Some day,” Atem agreed. “Make it soon. I’d like to see you again, before-- I need to _have_ a kingdom if I should leave you one.”

“Next life, then. I am done with you.”

“You would never say that.”

“I am gigantic,” said Seto never. “There is no reason to it. I get stuck in doorways a lot, and birds hit me in the face all the time. My dragon is shitty.”

Atem chuckled at his private fantasy, and his eyes prickled.

"I miss you, friend."

 

5.

Yugi was just as Atem had left him: tossing in his sleep and unaware of the offences he had committed onto Atem's mind.

Atem spent a good hour just staring at him, willing him awake and imagining a proper occasion to accuse him of more crimes - because that would certainly improve their predicament - but Yugi just tossed and clawed at pillows and slept. And, eventually, Atem substituted a cushion with his royal shoulder and felt instantly better. 

No sandals could break if he wasted his day in bed. 

It was Mahad to collect him, in the end, and Mahad only dared when the day grew late enough for it to be a real possibility that Yugi had once again attempted murder. But Atem was not murdered in any obvious way - no blood on the floor or severed limbs or anything, and--

\--and good enough for Mahad.

The bastard was leaving already.

He only acknowledged Atem once he saw him stir and caught his eyes, and so he bowed with one foot out of the door and dragged himself back inside.

Atem winked.

"Why've you come?" he whispered once his gracelessly-snoring conquest received acknowledgement.

Mahad tore his stare from one of the dozen bruises speckling Yugi's back, and looked to his feet.

"Court," he said quietly, though he likely meant to drag Atem aside and berate him about the mess he made of place affairs.

Atem had crossed the room by the time he remembered the circumstance. 

"Do you think reads?" he looked back to his queen, all white, speckled, and decisively comatose. "I should know. I don't."

His heart broke to leave him and his hands itched to set fire to his hair, but still he had no words and no occasion to speak to him. He licked the middle joints of his fingers and walked back, aimless and perplexed.

Mahad threw some truly stern glares his way, but Atem only meant to remove the tightest of his rings he had no patience to remove the night before. 

They slid easily over Yugi's lax fingers and glittered against his ashen skin.

Atem kissed his palm before he left this time.

"You think I forced myself onto him," Atem told Mahad quietly, his wavering worsened by the reality of things. "It's why you came to wake me in Mana's stead."

A flock of servants greeted him on the other side of the door, with rings under their eyes and makeshift tables along the hallway as if they've been camped out there for hours and expected him to ask for grapes and heads once he finally emerged.

Mahad frowned.

"Is that what I am now," Atem said to himself.

"It's your royal prerogative." And then: "forgive me. It isn't my business, I-"

"I didn't..." Atem watched a girl tie his third pair of shoes. "It is you business, you are my friend. And I did nothing of the sort."

Mahad finally met his gaze from beneath his bangs. 

"I didn't," Atem insisted and felt heat creep up his cheeks.

"Perhaps... perhaps gentler next time. "

"I wasn't cruel, I-" Atem's mood perked up, "why, did they hear him scream? I can't remember if he did."

Aha! Mahad bristled.

"Well, I suppose-- Not much to be done about that. His bed manner is atrocious."

Atem couldn't help himself when Mahad had nothing to say to that. He grinned and hooked their arms together. 

"It will bother you either way if I did or didn't," Atem told his friend softly. "I've never known you to hold grudges. Don't start now, not on my behalf. Walk with me."

"You've forgiven him, then. Both of them."

He meant to elbow Mahad's ribs but he missed. He'd made his point, though, at the expense of his friend's kidney.

" _Aknadin_ ," he cleared his throat, because palace affairs did not subsist (entirely) on his personal affairs, "only went to fetch _Seto_ from his _vacation_. We can't presume he won't turn up. He's an old man, perhaps he lost his writing hand to arthritis."

From the corner of his eye, Atem saw a cup bearer exchange meaningful looks with the sandal girl.

Vultures, all of them. 

"Just look at this mess," he hissed and nodded a guard over before he addressed the pair.  "You two seem to have an ear for gossip. An ear too many, in my opinion. You, yes you. No- not on my clean floor, unless you mean to trade your sword for a mop."

Mahad spared the servants no pity.

"The council will convene at your majesty's pleasure," he told Atem sternly.

"Even before that," Atem  shrugged out of his robe the moment his feet touched bathhouse tiles, "get a fleet ready. Something sizable. If we can't outrun Seto with a message, maybe gossip can. And Mahad?" he touched his friend's shoulder, "my house is on fire that I did not set. Take it to mean what you want,  but I will put a crown on that dragonfucker in three days, and then bed my little bastard twin for as long as I have left in this world."

Mahad frowned.

"You would think," Atem rolled his eyes, "the gossip would at least be reasonable. But instead," he turned to one of the men pouring hot water into his bath, "instead-- what is it that you lot think?"

"The devil stole our king's face and bewitched Him into madness," the slave told him plainly.

"Right, well. Off with your ear, I suppose."

 

6.

Atem saw it loiter in the very back of the throne room, black and hovering at the edge of the grand entry like a thing welcome there.

It irked him.

It crept into his mind and muted the voices of his court gradually, first their volumes and then their words, then the colors on the walls and the scents of summer, until all that occupied the entire span of Atem's limited attention was an occasional contour behind his counselors. An odd slave spouted a double shadow. Ghost dice bounced against tiles.

No one noticed.

It occurred to him that the sensible thing to do was to dismiss his party planner in the middle of his tedious report about the costs of blue dye, and to chase his own shadow.  

It would just lead him to Yugi.

At least that particular obsession was a shared one.

Yugi was his destination. Yugi was the center of every crossroad. Him, unless the sun meant to stretch Atem's restless silhouette the entire way across the desert, to where the Thief loitered. Atem wanted his attention just as much, if only to pick a fight with someone tangible, someone he knew for certain to mean him harm.

Yugi's old chambers were as he had left them, touched by superstition but not by inquisitive hands.

"Is it my quest to speak to an imaginary Yugi here?" Atem hissed at no one in particular.

At least Yugi was not one for tacky interior design, although he never occupied the priest quarters for any significant length of time.

There wasn't much there.

One of these things~~

What little of Yugi's meager possessions remained were the ones Atem had already seen. It was their scent that caught his attention, a tang of familiar spices blended into nothing really specific but distinctively false. Flowers weren't flowers. Mint wasn't mint. It lingered between the folds of clothes that hadn't been worn for weeks, and Atem was glad he got Yugi out of the habit because whoever told him this fragrance was good had sold on Yugi's boyish insecurities.

Even the coins that fell from the folds of thick blue pants were fake and worthless. A child could tell Yugi’s steel from silver.

But at least the dye was rich, and, well. 

Hmm.

"Can you please not."

Atem would gather his skirts and faint right then.

He would, but the floor was a little dusty.

Imaginary Yugi?

Yugi's old priest chambers remained conspicuously empty.

Atem clutched at his racing heart.

"You are awful at hiding, I could see your hair the entire time!" he wheezed. "Don't lie on the floor, it's unbecoming. Out with you!"

"Shh! Hi, um," Yugi hushed him from under the bed and let out a monstrous breath. "Can you close the door, please. Your maje-"

But Atem waved him off and went to shut the door, if only to get back into his skin without stealthy pests noticing he had jumped out of it. Except, Yugi cursed him with broken shoes and petty nuisances, so of course the door would not latch.

At least this room had a door. But, apparently, it would not do, and king Atem, crown and all, had to bar it with a chair - as instructed by one bony hand perched bravely from beneath a futon.

"It is shut, no one can see you now. Why don't you come out."

But Yugi would not come out, not for food or promises of forced extraction.

"Why were you going through my stuff?"

"You can't reasonably expect any privacy after you've nearly murdered me."

"You're gonna bring that up forever, aren't you?"

Well, yes.

Of course Atem will, but even lies like "I will stop if you come and sit with me" did not help move Yugi from the dirt.

It was the cruelest consequence of what (Atem suspected) was their time apart - this regression. It made Atem uneasy, made him into a voyeur to things private and dark unmaking Yugi's composure, and Atem was left to look through pinholes Yugi's insecurities had left in him and wonder if he was right about the cause.

Yugi was shy as a child. He had told Atem as much, once, in this very room when a God came to 'go through his stuff' and threatened to have his stupid pale head removed for his own entertainment. But for every graceless and cheerful bone in his body, every friendly grin and modest stare and insolent sentence, Yugi was always too kind with his words.

Perhaps 'shy' was his way of saying he was a frightened and lonely little thing.

And then he wasn't. A little thing, yes, but not lonely, not frightened, with a shiny new friend whose kneecaps Atem would like to break, and, _well_.

Yugi would not hide under the furniture then.

Nothing could make Yugi hide under the furniture then.

He sighed.

Time apart was the cause of this, he decided.

Just not _their_ time apart.

With that, Atem lay on the floor, too.

"Lost memories cannot undo who you've grown to be. You are braver than this. I do not need to be your Yami to remind you. Come out."

Sour eyes and bloated cheeks greeted him once he was low enough to see them properly.

"I don't think you could've said that any worse if you tried," Yugi mumbled into his elbow. He lay on his stomach, crammed into the narrow space between the futon and the floor, covered in a thin layer of dust.

There was an enormous spider right by his head.  Atem was too kind to tell him.

"You will come out. Now," he ordered stiffly, keenly aware his own skin was in contact with dirt at that very moment.

He felt a rash coming on. Everywhere. And fever, and every sort of disease, the flesh-eating kind, and the plague and allergies and death.

"You're on the floor," Yugi observed helpfully. "Wow."

He squeezed his eyes shut when Atem had had enough, squirmed as he was hauled him from underneath the furniture, permitted a brief hug, and then refused to be handled.

Atem's fingertips began tingling. Hell, his whole mouth tingled.

He sat a polite distance away and kept his hands to himself.

"How are you feeling?" he said carefully.

Yugi just shrugged, pulled his feet up, and tucked his knees under his chin.

Atem bit his lip.

"I meant... I cannot help but think I've done," he paused, "something wrong. Are you well?"

Predictably, Yugi flushed.

"I-? Oh. No! No, I'm fine."

But he wouldn't stop wringing his hands.

"Ah, well. Good," Atem felt heat creep up his cheeks, too. "That is very good."

"I just... didn't think that the guards would let me... er, they let me leave the room, so I left. Didn't know where else to go. Sorry. Just don't wear my clothes. Sorry. Sorry," he shook his head as if to shake crowding thoughts out of it. "I'm not..." he gestured weakly with his fingers. "Not sending the right message here. Sorry, I just. Can't think."

"Not at all."

Yugi stared at his pile of junk that Atem had graciously sorted for him, and said nothing.

"I've ordered them to let you roam. And-  you don't have to pretend the guards spooked you, I- did I hurt you in any way? I don't- " Atem stared at his palms, "I don't understand."

Yugi's stuttering was a contagious disease. Atem should've known.

"It's not like that."

"Then-?"

"I... um," Yugi tried several times and inched in and out of Atem's space until, finally, he unclenched one of his sweaty fists. Rings fell out of it, and he swept them away like they were dirty. "I don't want this."

"Of course," Atem took them back, one by one. "Of course."

"I don't want, um, payment. I don't-"

Oh _Ra_ and all of his bird gods, he heard it, then, what the rumours made of him.

"I just miss my friends," he finished quietly, hugged himself, and shrunk.

Atem offered him one cautious hand across the space between them and thanked a whole assortment of bird gods when Yugi took it.

"You made one friend here," he rubbed circles between Yugi's knuckles. "You're a foreigner in a world of dark magic, I suppose I was a little too enchanted by your brav- stupidity to think you won't be frightened by even a minute without my support."

Yugi couldn't cling to his melancholy for long. He bit down the smallest, shyest of grins, and Atem smiled at him for it.

"It's not the magic," Yugi explained after a while. "I like the people here. Your staff are all good friends. I mean, I can tell. And I want to try, I do. I just... doesn't something feel off? To you?"

This time, Atem didn't tell him that he had once again brought a knife, but he thought on Yugi's concerns for a good minute.

No sense in sheltering him.

"I've given this advice only once before, to Seto, and we were boys then. No one can be a part of court without friends here. He grit his teeth and kicked the entire way, but he learned," Atem rolled his eyes at the memory, "and adapted. You," he swept a stubborn curl aside, "you will find no friends here. Never."

Yugi wrung his hands.

"It takes years to cleanse rumours, and the ones about us are nasty. I need you to understand what people think of you. You tried to kill me and I took you to bed for it. You're rude and strange and a foreigner. You stole my face. I'd name you a prince to something, but your skin is the wrong color for it. They think you bewitched me, or that I've gone insane - no, dear, I don't want your apologies. I want your vigilance. You have no friends in my palace. In fact, I think Mahad meant to assassinate you this morning. I think I changed his mind, though I can't be certain. Oh well."

By the end of it, Yugi looked the furthest from _'oh well'_ he could possibly look.

Atem laughed at him then, laughed at him for a long time, and when Yugi finally scrunched his face and asked for Atem's help to barricade the window, he did it, and laughed through the job.

"What a mood! You are absolutely ridiculous."

"I'm out of furniture," Yugi frowned and inspected their handiwork.

"A dia dhank might serve your purpose better than this."

"The magician might just assassinate _you_ for that."

"Oh, hush," Atem told his left. "And, all this fortification work is for nought. You will stay in the guest manor, or in my rooms. Not here. When the Thief comes, it will be safer there, even with the scary guards who won't befriend you.  If I live to see it."

"Can you just _not_ be morbid for a minute," Yugi rolled his eyes at him, and at once Atem began to think of ways to punish him for it. "Ugh. Focus on something, will you? Is Bakura coming soon? How do you know?"

Atem probed at the bruises on Yugi's leg and pressed the largest one, hard.

Yugi smacked his knee. 

"'When' is a condition," he told him and tried to steal away one of his stupid white hands. "My Destiny Beings When The Thief Enters The Capital."

"Buil-ow! Build a really tall wall!"

What was another bite mark on Atem's noble arm, if his back was a mess from the night before? Atem let the little demon have at it, and instead focused on reclaiming a pair of undamaged shoes that were probably his anyway, before Yugi appropriated them.

"We would build a wall, but the Thief climbs!"

Yugi laughed and dislodged his teeth.

Atem slipped into his single concurred shoe, victorious.

"You really thought about building a wall?"

"I've also considered a moat around the whole of Weset. No capital, no destiny."

"That's... obnoxiously literal," Yugi frowned, but he had never met the obnoxiously literal woman whose tacky necklace made tacky prophesies, and Yugi's life was better for it.

It cackled in the back of Atem's mind then, the shadow, familiar and unwelcome. It had a solid weight now, heavier every minute, like stones piled one by one on chests of traitors until they confessed their crimes.

Heavier than the thing that tried to grind Seto's bones to dust by a good tenfold.

He doubted himself still, in passing, in the furthest dead ends of the labyrinth in his mind - the same place he used as retreat whenever Aknadin was too obvious in his schemes and Atem had to work very hard to feign ignorance to the Eye -  if he had actually done it, if Seto was just sand in the desert now, and all reports of him were lies.

He could barely withstand the thing's grasp back then.

And now it whined, paced, lingered, demanded his attention, laughed at him - with him - but Atem slid right through its tendrils and refused to be possessed. 

Atem was one for vanity.

He spent time with Yugi sometimes just to flaunt him, to gloat at the thing and taunt it with Yugi's presence. Yugi was the one that cut it like a weed. It should be mad, it should be stomping its shady foot and demanding shadow vengeance.

Instead, it dwindled into an obnoxious presence in the back of his mind where it cackled harmlessly and made Atem chase it.

Before he knew it, his palms were black with eyeliner and gold dust.  

"Allergies?"

"Hn. Headache. Come," Atem told him and gave a stellar example of standing up with grace. "I can't sit through another meeting, and I have too many tonight. You might learn something."

He offered Yugi no hand, else he would embarrass them both when Yugi would reject it.

"I don't want to."

Atem squinted at him, at his slouching posture and the disaster that was his hair, one-shoed and looking worse for wear, in clothes that looked as strange on him as he was a stranger to wearing them.

"You will come, and you will fix our makeup for us."

"Oh," Yugi stared meaningfully at his barricades and at Atem's smudged face. "No, thank you. I don't want to. Both things."

Atem laughed at him, put him in the lightest of headlocks to steal his one remaining shoe, and promised to send unfriendly guards after him if he didn't appear in the royal apartments by supper.

"You're still a jerk."

"Ah," Atem threw over his shoulder as he made his exist over a windowsill. "Did you mean to change that? I was rather occupied with being nearly murdered to take any notice."

 

6.

Yugi's shoes lasted Atem an entire corridor before one of the soles broke right off.

The servants whispered.

 

 

7.

Yugi meant it when he said he did not want to do it, not that he was unskilled.

He came late for supper, but he came, with haste under his feet and with an eye on any place that could hide a whole guard.

He brought his things with him, all of them.

He also brought his disdain, and Atem couldn't help but suspect Yugi had essentially moved in with him when he dropped his mess onto the nearest table and just left it there to clutter Atem's apartments.

Atem stared at the scene sideways through his bangs. The servant tending him ignored Yugi's existence, and when Yugi noticed her, he bowed at her, then at Atem, and said, "hello, your majesty. Hello, miss."

Atem's stare turned into an exasperated eyeroll.

"Out," he waved at the woman, "can't have you catching his rudeness, _miss_."

Yugi gave him a stern look and went back to trying to pull his checkered board from the pits of his  rubbish.

"You keep saying that, but I still don't know what I'm doing that's so rude," he squared his board on the nearest clear surface and began stacking game pieces onto it. He was noisy.

Clack, clack, clack.

Atem tapped his knee.

"My council is meeting in half an hour, and I am in attendance for it. I don't see how your game will get me ready."

"I'm multitasking," Yugi said and smacked a black queen onto a white tile. "I still can't believe you're serious."

"You are, above all caveats, a guest in my palace. You might as well earn your keep."

Yugi appraised him, unhappy and sour, then sighed and nodded.

"That's entirely fair."

He measured Atem then, and his eyes trailed along bare collarbones and lips. Yugi's gaze lingered, and he looked away when they both became aware of it.

Atem sensed his hesitation.

He sensed it, and decided he did not care for it. He stood, let a linen towel slide down his decisively dust-free body, and made his way to step on Yugi's toes and feel his warm breath on his face.

"Fine," Yugi conceded and ducked around him to get Atem's clothes, and not at all because his pale hands where just inches away from wrapping around Atem's waist and reeling him in.  

Not at all.

He returned with a stack of blue.

"I don't much care for blue."

"Too bad."

Atem eyed Yugi's outfit and judged him for it.

"I can't say I trust your judgement."

"Too bad," his terrible servant repeated. "I'm actually good at this. I just don't like you right now, so you're getting blue."

To prove himself, he struggled for a good minute to tell the back of the dress apart from its front.

He lied, of course, perhaps not about his skill which Atem still certainly doubted, but about the color. Yugi had trouble with drapery, and this dress required none. Still, he was as confident and he was careful with the fabric and surprisingly meticulous about preserving the folds.

Atem decided he very much liked watching Yugi being delicate with things.

"You lace the side," he offered, and Yugi licked his lip to stop an unwelcome smile as he guided Atem's arm through a sleeve. His touch lingered, and his fingertips were just as delicate against his skin as they were with his linens. They combed through the back of Atem's head, caught spilled hairs, and tucked them away.

Yugi was diligent, but still very much annoyed, so when he as good as ordered Atem to wrap his own shawl, Atem measured his authority with a gauging leer and did as he was told.

And, honesty, he kind of liked it.

Meanwhile, Yugi sorted through his belts and necklaces and decided Atem should wear all of them at once.

"You _are_ good," he determined, and Yugi's knuckles brushed the back of his neck. They were warm, and the gold he meant to latch around Atem's throat should have been cold, but Yugi warmed it before he let it touch him. "You should dress to show it. This isn't your color."

"It's got sleeves," Yugi muttered, and Atem caught him by one. He shoved the fabric out of the way, found an angry handprint there, bigger than either of their hands, likely the freshest one from the day he yanked him out of prison.  

Yugi smacked him lightly.

"You will see a nurse. Yes, you don't want to, we know. You will see a nurse."

Yugi had a few choice words for him. He parted his pretty lips to say them, but then stopped, ceased functioning altogether, then huffed and turned on his heel. Marched to his chess game. Slammed a piece into place. Set his jaw.

"Ah. Angry," Atem grinned.

"I'm chasing him down."

"Tell me you are winning, at least."

"Oh _yeah_ ," Yugi offered like it was the most natural thing in the world. He seemed annoyed with himself.

"Well. It isn't exactly a game of Gods," Atem said and made a vague gesture for him to tend to his god-king, but Yugi sort of looked at him quizzically and decided Atem wanted a single grape.  

Not quite.

He realized he should go back to work eventually. Jewels grazed Atem's shoulders, and chains and gold and feathers he knew were just Yugi's sneaky touch.

It was the belt that finally got to him, the way Yugi let it spill between his fingers before he draped it, tightened it, and reeled Atem in from the back.

"You're enjoying this way too much," Yugi muttered into his ear when Atem pressed into him.

He would tip and straddle, but Yugi wouldn't know what to do with him, and it was all terribly frustrating.

"Stop making eyes, I just put clothes on you."

"But," Atem said sensually and let his shawl slip along the curves of his back, "what if we keep them on?"

"What if we sit in the makeup chair," Yugi frowned.

For each of Yugi's crude mannerisms, at least he was considerate.

He dipped the inking stick into the well once he figured out which end to use, and tried it on his hand first. Atem was sure he wouldn't lose an eye to this, but Yugi hesitated as he put a palm on Atem's cheek, even withdrew it once only to inch his fingers to his temples and stare down, lost.  

"Well done," Atem pretend to inspect his test line. "On with it, then."

"It's weird every time," he shook his head clear, "to touch you."

They were staring at each other now, both unblinking and a little puzzled with what exactly had brought on this moment of intimacy in a world where Yugi insisted on being cross with him and Atem only meant to ruffle some feathers.

Yugi managed to dust some gold just under Atem's brow before his game distracted him.

"Probably just sacrificed a pawn," he rested the brush between his teeth to move a piece. "Yup, it's gone. Here."

Painted wood fell into Atem's palm, and he complained Yugi wasn't using the marble set.

"You know, that's probably a person," Yugi scolded him.

"Ah, yes. I forgot you believe what you're doing with this thing isn't what the Gods had planned anyway," Atem tossed the pawn. "Please."

Yugi wiped his nose with the back of his sleeve and matched the gold on the abandoned eyelid with a grudge.

 "Lost a rook."

"A what?"

"This," Yugi dropped another white piece into Atem's hand. "The castle-looking thing."

Atem inspected it with a little more care.

"Well. You are certainly active today."

"I can't waste anymore time," he wiped his nose again. "If I waste time, that's bad for us. If I play, that's bad for everyone."

"Then win quickly."

Yugi shuffled and looked like he would rather have Atem ruffle his feathers and clothes than to have difficult conversations.  

"If I win, it's not good for you."

Atem threw his head back and laughed at him for that. It ripped through his lungs and burst out of him in waves of intermittent hilarity.

He lost his breath twice by the time Yugi corked him with grapes and questionably good intentions.

"Of all things not good for me!" he hooted. "Please, Yugi! I'd bed you both, if it comes to it! Gods, you're precious."

"Wow," his bad servant grimaced. "Thanks, I'm blushing."

Atem slid down his chair until he slumped in it. His bangs spilled, so he twirled a strand around his finger and winked.  

But Yugi would not laugh with him, though it took him far too much effort to abstain.

He came when Atem beckoned. It was the one thing Yugi could never resist. Another was Atem's hands, and the third was a good challenge.

So Atem leered at him, lured him closer, slid the flat of his palm up his thigh, the outer side where Yugi was still composed to deny him, until his other hand lost its way and slipped into the creases of Yugi's undershorts.

The look he received for it was so damningly _offended_ that Atem swallowed hard and offered up his face to the mercy of Yugi's pen.

For a good measure, he sat on his hands.

"I can't understand what you want. Shall I fondle you anyway, or are you too angry for it?"

Yugi, for all his dedication to being stern, snorted finally.

"I'm angry," he conceded after a minute, then finally set his brush down to take Atem's hand into his own and press it kindly to his belly. "You can fondle."

Atem laughed.

"Just stop moving your face, I'm trying to be useful."

It helped with melancholy to be useful, Atem supposed. It made little sense to him that Yugi would feel otherwise - his presence was as amusing as it was needed, and that alone was perhaps Yugi's greatest use. Atem would explain it to him, if he had even the faintest hope Yugi would understand that 'use' could hardly mean makeup duties to someone in Atem's position. 

Rather, Yugi had the honors, and Atem had his company.

Atem suspected this concept would never click.

"You are doing well," he reassured him.   

Yugi gave him an appeased glare and picked a few loose hairs from his cheeks. His fingers were cool once they returned to Atem's temples. His penwork was trained and precise.

Atem felt strangely secure in his hands.

"Done."

"No."

"You look pretty done, though," Yugi planted his hands on his hips and scrutinized his work.

Atem blinked a fallen eyelash away and turned to a brass mirror to look for a good reason to get Yugi's hands back on his face. Glitter, then. Too much glitter suited him just fine.

But Yugi's work was so crisp and truly done that Atem huffed.

"I rather hoped," he begrudged, "that you would mess up terribly, and I would be in no state to attend anything."

Yugi grabbed him by the chin.

"You need to do things. Palace things. Now. If you walk fast, you'll make it on time."

Atem withheld from him that he was an hour late before Yugi even got here, and he would have gotten away with it, too, if Mahad (who had doubtless spent the hour with his ear pressed to the door) didn't decide their silence signaled an appropriate time to invite himself in.

"See that?" Atem pointed a disgusted finger at his closest friend, and blamed Yugi. "You did that. He didn't even knock. Unbelievable."

Yugi bowed at Mahad and shrunk visibly, but stayed brave and spoke his mind.

"I'm sorry, sir," Yugi said, "that he's like this."

Atem's magician acknowledged Yugi just barely. Instead, he informed Atem that--

"I am _not_ hosting twenty councilmen and a damned statue in my private rooms!"

When giggles finally broke through Yugi's resentment, they came in bursts of unmistakable payback.  

He played a good servant then, and began pulling up chairs.

Do your palace things.

 

**Author's Note:**

> From Wikipedia: "The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time."
> 
> This is the exact game Yugi plays against Anubis, and the story is written around it. But you aren't reading for Yugi. You're reading for Atem whose job is to observe from sidelines and look pretty in his shiny jewellery that's such a pain my butt to draw. 
> 
> Please don't repost the art. :( 
> 
> Any feedback is gr8 and thanks very much for reading!


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